Our story
During the years of 2002-2004, El Camino Hospital Emergency Department admissions indicated that only 3% of the population served by the hospital were South Asian, but represented a disparate 6% of all acute myocardial infarction (MI) cases. Also, heart disease seemed to be striking South Asians at a younger age and more malignantly than the general population. So in 2006, with the financial support of philanthropists in the South Asian community and the El Camino Hospital Foundation, the South Asian Heart Center was established at the El Camino Hospital as a non-profit response to the epidemic of heart disease striking the urban South Asian population. Today, the Center helps the South Asian community (people who originate from the Indian subcontinent countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal) reduce the incidence of heart disease and diabetes, with its unique and comprehensive AIM to Prevent program.
To be the leader in the prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in South Asians.
The Center's Mission is to reduce the high incidence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in South Asians with a culturally appropriate lifestyle approach, and through community awareness, education, screening, coaching, and research.
The Center's strategic initiatives are designed to provide best in class, evidence-based, lifestyle-centric, risk reduction methodology to South Asians and their physicians.
- Be where South Asians are.
- Build relationships in the South Asian community to raise awareness of the health disparity.
- Promote the Center as the "family's defense to the epidemic".
- Seek our participants’ commitment to help those in their sphere of influence -- family members, friends, co-workers, employees, professional, religious, and cultural affiliates -- enhance lifestyles and reduce risk.
- Co-locate South Asian Heart Centers in urban areas with large South Asian populations.
- Include effective, affordable, minimally-invasive, emerging/advanced screenings and innovative lifestyle management technologies to prevent disease to enhance health and longevity.
- Track sustained improvement in lifestyle and risk reduction in program participants.
- Increase the community of trained, collaborating, and referring physicians and healthcare organizations.
- Create a formal network of physicians affiliated with the Center.
- Provide physicians with practice guidelines and culturally appropriate resources to address the epidemic.
- Publish risk prediction standards for South Asians in peer-reviewed journals.
- Study the effectiveness of the Center’s AIM to Prevent program.
- Examine longitudinal impact of lifestyle changes on morbidity and mortality.
AIM to Prevent program participants to-date
Achieved 150min/wk
physical activity target
Reached 4 servings of
vegetables/day target
Improved cholesterol ratios
Bettered tricglyceride levels
Identified with previously undiagnosed hypertension
Physicians trained on epidemiology
Collaborating physicians
referring patients to Center
Established partnership
with PAMF
- Collaborated with Stanford, UCSF and PAMF research programs
- Presented posters at ACC, ADA, and AHA conferences
- Published in Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, Diabetes and Vascular Research, International Journal of Cardiology, and Ethnicity and Disease
- U.S. Congress Award of Distinction (2012)
- Santa Clara County Asian Heroes Award (2012, 2013)
- Association of Fundraising Professionals Award (2009, 2013)
