We would like to express our appreciation to Beth Haigh who helped with the preparation of the final manuscript and Dr. Wesley Lefferts who contributed to creation of graphics and formatting of the document.

POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

In order to produce the best possible recommendations and report, we included fire service personnel with an acknowledged interest in firefighter health and safety; health care providers who currently screen firefighters, including individuals who own occupational health clinics or hold leadership roles in those organizations; researchers who have received grant funding and participated in cardiovascular research in the fire service; and physicians and others who advocate for, provide and/or use coronary artery calcium scores in their current practice. There is a potential for the conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest in each of these
cases. However, broad participation from experienced individuals also provides a strength of the approach. For transparency, we have listed individuals who participated in the project and their role.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The BETTER HEART (Building Evaluations That Translate Evidence and Research for Heart Evaluations And Related Training) project sought to use the latest medical information, research findings from studies of firefighters, and data from firefighters’ occupational medical exams to develop enhanced, evidence-based guidelines for the detection of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in firefighters. The BETTER HEART program brought together fire service leaders, occupational health experts, and researchers. The Core Multidisciplinary Project Team coordinated the efforts of the other groups while the Medical Advisory Team was responsible for making the recommendations for enhanced cardiac screening. As seen in Figure 1, these overlapping teams worked together to achieve the project’s two primary goals.