Million Hearts™: preventing a million heart attacks and strokes through public-private collaboration. Interview by...

Janet S Wright speaks to Caroline Telfer, Assistant Commissioning Editor. Janet S Wright is the Executive Director of Million Hearts™, a US Department of Health and Human Services initiative with the explicit goal of preventing a million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. From May 2008-September 2011, Dr Wright served as Senior Vice President for Science and Quality at the American College of Cardiology (ACC). The division she led at the ACC encompasses the clinical guidelines, performance measures, health policy statements and appropriate-use criteria; quality improvement projects such as Door-to-Balloon and Hospital-to-Home; and the National Cardiovascular Data Registry, a suite of databases containing over 12 million patient records in both inpatient and outpatient care settings. Prior to joining the ACC, Dr Wright spent many years in practice in Chico, CA, USA. Dr Wright served on the ACC's Board of Trustees and chaired the Task Force on Performance Assessment, Recognition, Reinforcement, Reward and Reporting. She was a member of National Committee for Quality Assurance's Clinical Programs Committee and of the Quality Alliance Steering Committee. She served on the board of the Center for Information Therapy, a nonprofit organization committed to the provision of personalized health information during each healthcare encounter. From 2003 until moving to Washington (USA), Dr Wright served as a founding member of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee, the 29-person board charged with administering the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Her primary interests are the design and implementation of systems of care to achieve optimal outcomes for patients and the full deployment of hooks, tricks and cues that help people get and stay healthy.