Mission and Goals

Our mission

The mission of the EVMS 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.

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 EVMS 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 EVMS/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.