Mission and Goals

Our Mission

Our mission

The mission of the Fetal Cardiology Fellowship is to train future academic leaders in Fetal Cardiology by accomplishing the following:

• Bring together a multidisciplinary team that provides detailed evaluation, counseling, and management of high-risk pregnancies affected by congenital cardiac anomalies.
• Ensure that families receive the highest quality of care for congenital heart problems during pregnancy and after birth.
• Investigate and address potential disparities that exist in the prenatal detection of clinically significant congenital heart defects.
• Raise public awareness of prenatal diagnosis of congenital heart problems (CHD) and provide ongoing educational support to affected families in the community.
• Provide continuing education to sonographers, fellows, cardiologists, obstetricians, Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialists, and other allied health practitioners involved in the prenatal diagnosis and management of pregnancies affected by or at risk of fetal cardiac conditions.

Clinical service

Our goals

Clinical service

• Establish fetal cardiac rounds for a multidisciplinary team (bi-weekly).
• Organize referrals for “second opinion” with known fetal CHD.
• Utilize “patient navigator” to improve patient care.
• Develop protocols for pregnancy management accounting for other maternal and fetal complications.

Community service

• Develop educational materials, including an web page for patients carrying fetuses with CHD.
• Collaborate with local CHD family support groups.
• Host events raising public awareness of the prenatal diagnosis of CHD (annually – February).

Research directions

• Establish registry for CHD in our institute/Hampton Roads.
• Study disparities in the prenatal detection of CHD.
• Investigate outcomes in fetuses with CHD and fetal growth restriction (FGR).
• Develop checklist to optimize prenatal screening for CHD.
• Continue collaboration with GE/Cannon/SonoSim/VP on developing AI algorithms for prenatal detection of CHD and simulation platforms for training.
• Explore opportunities to increase funding for research activities.

Education

• Provide Continuing Medical Education courses with hands-on training for sonographer/fellows in the community.
• Create an online educational platform for fetal cardiology.