Smidt Heart Institute Experts Selected to Join JACC Editorial Team

Newswise — LOS ANGELES (June 24, 2024) -- Aakriti Gupta, MD, and Michelle Kittleson, MD, PhD, cardiologists in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, have been selected to join the senior editorial team of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), effective July 1.

Gupta, an interventional and structural cardiologist, is one of the journal’s new executive associate editors. Kittleson, director of Heart Failure Research and director of Post Graduate Medical Education in Heart Failure and Transplantation, is an associate editor specializing in heart failure.

“It’s an honor to join the editorial team of JACC during this exciting time in medical publishing,” said Gupta, an assistant professor of Cardiology. “The field is at an inflection point with the maturation of artificial intelligence—an area of special interest to me—and I’m thrilled to be a part of that transformation. I’m also excited to work closely with my peers on the JACC editorial team as we help shape contemporary research priorities, and as such, propel improvements in clinical care to ultimately improve patient outcomes.”

As a JACC executive associate editor, Gupta will lead the publication’s strategic relationships with health policy and research organizations, such as the Heart Valve Collaboratory and Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy, in areas pertaining to structural interventional cardiology. She also will lead and assess content initiatives, manuscript assignment and peer-review processes.

Gupta is an expert in performing transcatheter valvular interventions and complex coronary interventions. She has authored more than 100 scientific publications in leading medical journals, including Nature Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Circulation and JACC. She has been a section editor for Circulation: Cardiovascular Outcomes and Research, authored book chapters, and in 2022 was a finalist for the Samuel A. Levine Early Career Clinical Investigator Award from the American Heart Association.

As a JACC associate editor, Kittleson will review manuscripts in the fields of heart failure, transplant and cardiac amyloidosis to assess suitability for publication, as well as contribute to strategic journal initiatives. 

Previously, Kittleson was interim editor-in-chief of the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation and helped develop evidence-based cardiomyopathy and heart failure guidelines. She also has served on the board of directors of the Heart Failure Society of America. Kittleson’s essays have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and JAMA Cardiology, and she is author of the book Mastering the Art of Patient Care.

“Serving on the JACC editorial team is an exciting opportunity,” Kittleson said. “I'm looking forward to contributing to this role under the new leadership of JACC—a journal I have long studied and admired—as we look to build on its successes and make it better than ever before.”

Christine Albert, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Cardiology and the Lee and Harold Kapelovitz Distinguished Chair in Cardiology, said, “Congratulations to Drs. Gupta and Kittleson on their well-deserved appointments to the JACC editorial team. With their expert guidance, JACC will be poised to lead the field in advancing the most promising cardiovascular science.”

Read more from Cedars-Sinai Discoveries Magazine: New Insights May Yield Improvements in Heart and Brain Health