Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company have announced that the companies will support an American College of Cardiology (ACC) programme focused on driving quality improvement in cardiology and addressing the latest research advances in the reduction of cardiovascular risk and cardiovascular mortality in people with type 2 diabetes.

Despite recent advances, cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of death associated with diabetes. Given that people with diabetes are two to four times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than people without diabetes, cardiologists are treating more and more of the 30 million adults in the U.S. living with this condition who have experienced a cardiovascular event. Approximately 50 percent of deaths in people with type 2 diabetes worldwide and approximately two-thirds of deaths in people with type 2 diabetes in the US are caused by cardiovascular disease.

The new programme will capture key learnings from cardiologists who are managing cardiovascular risk for people with type 2 diabetes and identify how and why these healthcare professional innovators are leading this challenge. The learnings will be shared with the wider cardiology community to help prepare them for their increasingly important responsibility in reducing cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in people with type 2 diabetes.

"The ACC encourages efforts nationwide and globally to educate and communicate to cardiovascular healthcare providers and scientists about innovative advances in cardiovascular risk reduction in type 2 diabetes. This is the first stage in a longer-term process of optimizing cardiovascular risk reduction in these complex patient populations," said Nathan D. Wong, Ph.D., FACC, professor and director of the Heart Disease Prevention Program, Division of Cardiology at University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.

This initiative draws upon the unique power of the Diabetes Collaborative Registry, along with ACC's unsurpassed expertise in understanding and driving quality improvement in cardiology, to prepare the cardiology community for a coming paradigm shift in type 2 diabetes management and cardiovascular risk reduction.

"Along with Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim is proud to support the ACC in its efforts to drive quality improvement in cardiology," said Thomas Seck, M.D., vice president of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs - Primary Care, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "Given recent advances in research on cardiovascular risk reduction for people with type 2 diabetes, we need a better understanding of how and when innovative healthcare professionals are adopting new tools in our efforts to help educate the wider cardiology community."