June 21, 2017 | Srinath Adusumalli, MD, and Ahmad Masri, MD
Chapter Engagement

ACC's state chapters are important components of the professional homes of today's FITs. To that end, as FIT representatives to the Executive Council of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the ACC, we have been working on several initiatives that cross fellowship program lines and are aimed at engaging FITs across the state in the activities of ACC's PA Chapter, as well as the ACC on a national level.

In order to achieve those goals, with the support of ACC's PA Chapter, we have begun an FIT-moderated Google Group statewide forum to discuss issues important to FITs, starting with the fellow-to-faculty transition. Additionally, we hope to close the geographic distance between FITs in PA by modeling a part of the forum after the "Humans of New York" blog as suggested by Aditi Kalla, MD, an FIT at the Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, and a member of ACC's PA Chapter. This blog, called the "Humans of Cardiology," will feature brief pieces on interesting aspects of FITs' lives.

Finally, we plan to work on initiatives that align with the broader interests of ACC's PA Chapter and the ACC, specifically with regard to promoting awareness and understanding of the Quality Payment Program (as part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 [MACRA]) by utilizing cross-institutional FIT quality metric dashboards (a program co-led by Joshua Levenson, MD, an FIT at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). It is our hope that these projects will help to build and strengthen ACC's PA Chapter, as well as the ACC community of FITs.

This article was authored by Srinath Adusumalli, MD, a Fellow in Training (FIT) at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and Ahmad Masri, MD, an FIT at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.