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With aging, humans exhibit a decline in MFAU and MFAO. Although absolute rates of MGU do not increase, by virtue of the decline in MFAU there is likely an increase in relative contribution of MGU to substrate metabolism. The clinical significance of this metabolic switch awaits further study.

Early-career academic cardiologists currently face unprecedented challenges that threaten a highly valued career path. A team consisting of early career professionals and senior leadership members of American College of Cardiology (ACC) completed this white paper to inform the cardiovascular medicine profession regarding the plight of early career cardiologists and to suggest possible solutions. This paper includes: (1) definition of categories of early career academic cardiologists, (2) general challenges to all categories and specific challenges to each category, (3) obstacles as identified by a survey of current early career members of the ACC, (4) major reasons for the failure of physician-scientists to receive funding from National Institute of Health/National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NIH/NHLBI) career development grants, (5) potential solutions, and (6) a call to action with specific recommendations.

Background The lack of diversity in the cardiovascular physician workforce is thought to be an important driver of racial and sex disparities in cardiac care. Cardiology fellowship program directors play a critical role in shaping the cardiology workforce. Methods and Results To assess program directors’ perceptions about diversity and barriers to enhancing diversity, the authors conducted a survey of 513 fellowship program directors or associate directors from 193 unique adult cardiology fellowship training programs. The response rate was 21% of all individuals (110/513) representing 57% of US general adult cardiology training programs (110/193). While 69% of respondents endorsed the belief that diversity is a driver of excellence in health care, only 26% could quote 1 to 2 references to support this statement. Sixty‐three percent of respondents agreed that “our program is diverse already so diversity does not need to be increased.” Only 6% of respondents listed diversity as a top 3 priority when creating the cardiovascular fellowship rank list. Conclusions These findings suggest that while program directors generally believe that diversity enhances quality, they are less familiar with the literature that supports that contention and they may not share a unified definition of "diversity." This may result in diversity enhancement having a low priority. The authors propose several strategies to engage fellowship training program directors in efforts to diversify cardiology fellowship training programs.

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