From the PLA President: President’s Views

I am honored to have the opportunity to work with you all in promoting education, service and quality improvement efforts in clinical lipidology and preventive cardiology as this year’s President of the Pacific Lipid Association. Having great passion in this field over the 30-year span of my career, I enthusiastically hope to further promote involvement of our membership in local, regional and national efforts focused on better management of lipids and related risk factors to help combat cardiovascular disease as America’s leading cause of morbidity and mortality.

The Pacific Lipid Association is proud to present our issue of LipidSpin focusing on inflammation and cardiovascular disease, a topic of timely importance given the recent release of the CANTOS trial. Our issue ranges from contributions dealing with perspectives of where we have been and are going with the field of inflammation as a contributor of cardiovascular disease risk, to the best ways to measure and reduce inflammation — both lifestyle and pharmacologic — to case study examples of the high inflammatory risk patient and their evaluation and management.

My key priority is to improve member communication and to improve membership participation in PLA and National Lipid Association activities. I know our talented NLA Marketing and Communications team is working on both traditional and novel ways of communicating with NLA membership as a whole, including through newer social media methods. My plan is to reach our members with new initiatives (see also the PLA Chapter Update section of LipidSpin), including cholesterol control quality improvement partnerships such as with the American Heart Association’s Check. Change. Control. (CCC) Cholesterol.™ quality improvement program, hosting of local dinner and regional educational programs, partnership in local health fairs and featuring member accomplishments and other news via a quarterly newsletter.

In an effort to encourage your involvement, I also am inviting you to each contact me at ndwong@uci.edu should you have any suggestions or needs I can personally help you with (and most of you who know me well know I am quite responsive) to better involve you in PLA and NLA activities. I also hope we can get more involvement of PLA members on NLA national committees, certainly another valuable opportunity to make your voice known.

Disclosure statement: Dr. Wong has no financial disclosures to report.