Centers of Excellence

The Department of Medicine is proud of its affiliation with the following Centers of Excellence:

Heart and Vascular Center of Excellence

The Heart and Vascular Center is a joint effort by UMass Chan Medical School and UMass Memorial Health. It encompasses Cardiology, Cardiac Surgery, Vascular Surgery, and Heart and Vascular Anesthesia.

The Center provides state-of-the-art patient care in the areas of interventional cardiology, electrophysiology, open heart surgery, and transcatheter aortic valve replacement. It also offers a Mechanical Circulatory Assist Program, including destination VAD therapy. The Center for Complex Aortic Disease is a nationwide leader in the repair of complex aortic aneurysms involving the aorta, renal and visceral arteries. It is one of a few centers in the U.S. that has access to custom-made endografts and is a clinical trial site for physician-modified endovascular grafts. 

For more information about the Heart and Vascular Center, click here.

Diabetes Center of Excellence

The Diabetes Center of Excellence is the only public institution in Massachusetts that combines outstanding basic science, translational research, and clinical care under one roof of a world-class campus. Its mission is to:

• Provide care to people with diabetes using a collaborative network to deliver comprehensive, patient-centered, high-quality, “life-long, eyes-to-toes, with a heart” treatment
• Educate/train motivated individuals to provide outstanding diabetes clinical care, and to pursue and disseminate clinically relevant research
• Conduct the research to lessen disease impact from the ‘cradle-to-cure’

Under the co-direction of David M. Harlan, MD, and Dale L. Greiner, PhD, the UMass Diabetes Center of Excellence (DCOE) clinical and research team members strive to build a patient-centered clinical care system that provides the most up-to-date therapies, while also exploring new treatment methods; build on the strengths of the basic research already underway; and promote translational research to bring promising laboratory advances quickly and safely into clinical practice.

Their research team is working together to understand the root cause(s) of diabetes (type 1 and type 2) and to apply that knowledge to develop therapies to improve the quality of life for patients with the disease.  The ultimate goal of that basic research is to uncover the clues required to prevent the disease for those at risk, and cure those already diagnosed.  DCOE investigators are also pursuing practical, clinically oriented research to more effectively execute therapies currently known to be effective and yet are not widely applied.

Their clinical team works to continuously improve our patient-centered approach. They recognize that the individual with diabetes is the most important member of the care team and strive to ensure that our patients receive the most up-to-date and proven-to-be-effective treatments.

For more information about the Diabetes Center of Excellence, click here.