The last week of December is always a good time to look back and reflect, and also look forward to the next year, setting new resolutions to help us achieve our goals. This past year has been a busy one for the College, and I’ve been honored to serve as President.  In this blog post, I would like us to reflect on the successes of the past year and take pride in the accomplishments that our member volunteers and staff helped achieve. These have spanned the areas of education, quality, advocacy, membership and international engagement. Here is, in my opinion, a list of ACC’s top 10 successes of 2012:

1. The College launched a new online Lifelong Learning Portfolio to help members track educational needs, as well as learn more efficiently based on preferred topics and formats.
2. The College has embraced a new digital strategy and is improving online education resources based on user feedback, including an improved layout, the addition of CardioCompass and more. We have launched several mobile Apps adding to ACC’s collection, including the ACC Connect App, the CardioSource Mobile App, and for those attending ACC.13 the ACC.13 eMeeting Planner App, and more.
3. The ACC expanded its online and print publication coverage and now covers more clinical news than ever on CardioSource.org.  In addition to the Cardiology magazine print publication, this year the College launched CardioSource WorldNews and  CardioSource InterventionalNews to keep members up to date on both clinical and member news.  In 2013 the ACC is launching a new Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) focused on heart failure.
4. The ACC is enhancing CardioSmart to help CV professionals explain patient conditions at the point-of-care.
5. The College increased its focus on patient-centered initiatives like Million Hearts and Choosing Wisely aimed at preventing heart disease/stroke and ensuring appropriate care. We’ve also elected our first public member to the Board of Trustees.
6. The College’s National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR^®) launched the STS/ACC TVT Registry™, along with dashboards for the ACTION Registry^®-GWTG ™ and ICD Registry™ so that hospital performance data can be tracked in real-time.
7. The College is developing new quality initiatives around cardiometabolic health and anticoagulation use, along with new clinical toolkits on heart failure and atrial fibrillation to help clinicians meet guideline recommendations at the point of care.
8. 90 percent of ACC PAC-supported candidates (104) won their respective elections in November 2012, strengthening the College’s allies on Capitol Hill.
9. On the international front, the College is expanding international reach to create a more collaborative membership environment across the globe. We have added 10 international Chapters this year, and recently welcomed our 26th chapter; our international membership has reached more than 6,000 members.
10. The ACC’s social media presence is growing strong with more members joining these channels; I became the first Tweeting President with my Twitter account @WilliamZoghbi. Plus, we now have over 12,000 likes on ACC’s Facebook page and more than 6,000 following @ACCinTouch on Twitter!

As we get ready for the year ahead, I hope you can take pride in all that we have accomplished together at the College. I hope you’ve all had happy holidays and I look forward to a great new year!