The American Heart Association is launching a bold new initiative to fundamentally transform how heart transplant care is delivered across the United States, addressing long-standing gaps in innovation, equity and patient outcomes. The Association’s first-ever heart transplant research network will include 14 medical research centers and a coordinating center, bringing together scientists from around the country to create a national, unified data, research and quality care infrastructure aimed at improving heart transplant outcomes.
According to the American Heart Association’s 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, about 4,500 heart transplantations were performed in the U.S. in the most recent year, the highest number ever, yet more than 3,700 people remained on the waiting list in 2025. “Despite decades of breakthrough advances in cardiovascular medicine, the system supporting heart transplantation has remained largely unchanged. Today, transplant recipients still face serious challenges, including difficulty detecting heart rejection early, reliance on immunosuppressive therapies that have seen little advancement over the past 20 years and inconsistent outcomes, especially among Black patients and children,” said Mariell Jessup, M.D., FAHA, the chief science and medical officer of the American Heart Association. “This is one of the most high-stakes areas in medicine, yet innovation has lagged far behind. The American Heart Association has an urgent opportunity and responsibility to rethink care for heart transplant patients.”
Currently, heart transplant care is hindered by fragmented data systems, limited research investment and a lack of standardized quality improvement efforts. Many clinical guidelines are still based on expert consensus rather than robust, evolving evidence. The new initiative aims to change that by fostering collaboration across institutions, generating actionable data and ensuring that advances reach all people equitably. The multi-phase initiative is designed to accelerate progress through coordination, data and discovery, focusing on three key pillars: a global heart transplant data infrastructure, a research network for breakthrough science, and a coordinated path forward.
The global heart transplant data infrastructure, developed in collaboration with leading transplant organizations, will be a dynamic, harmonized platform enabling real-time insights to support research, quality improvement and policy advancement. The research network will bring together top institutions to advance care in critical areas including earlier and more precise detection of transplant rejection, remote monitoring technologies, viral surveillance, and development of safer, more effective therapies. The network will also support planning grants to accelerate clinical trials and advance research into immune tolerance and chronic rejection. Modeled after the Association’s Get With The Guidelines success, a scalable quality improvement framework will be established to drive system-wide change by standardizing transplant care, advancing accessibility, and improving long-term outcomes.
The initiative kicks off with the establishment of the new research network, with four-year research grants starting July 1, 2026. The coordinating center will be led by Emilia Bagiella, Ph.D., a professor of biostatistics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Other centers include Baylor College of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Columbia University, Duke University School of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Medical University of South Carolina, Stanford University, University of California San Diego, University of Colorado Denver, University of Pennsylvania, University of Utah, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. For patients and families navigating life after a heart transplant, this initiative represents hope for safer treatments, more personalized care and better long-term outcomes. “By bringing together this exceptional data, research and clinical expertise, the Heart Association can help accelerate discoveries and translate them into better care for every patient, no matter who they are or where they live,” Jessup said. “With this ambitious effort, the American Heart Association is taking a critical step toward modernizing heart transplant care, ensuring that innovation in this field finally catches up with the rest of cardiovascular medicine.”
