LAUSR

There are 55 National Heart Failure Societies (NHFS) and Working Groups within the Heart Failure Association (HFA) providing important support to the HFA in the development of new ideas and programmes and in the promotion of heart failure (HF) as a target for both healthcare professionals and researchers. Every year since 2011, HFA has organized a NHFS Summit aiming to address the needs of the societies and to discuss the best ways to improve cooperation among the national societies and between societies and the HFA. By tradition, the NHFS Summit provides an excellent opportunity for national representatives to meet each other, to meet and personally discuss with HFA Board members, and to harmonise all valorous ideas raised on the occasion of the summit. In 2020, the NHFS Summit was held for the first time online as a virtual meeting on 15 December, with participation of 37 representatives of NHFS and 14 HFA Board members. Distinct to previous meetings, rich in social interactions and personal discussions, this year summit had to accommodate an online format (Figure 1). However, despite of being a virtual meeting, the main themes for 2020 remained the dialogue and the continuity. For the first time, the NHFS representatives were asked in advance to answer a questionnaire and the results were presented during the meeting. The questionnaire focused on the identification of the NHFS specific needs and addressed four major points, essential for the perspective of further cooperation between NHFS and HFA: ‘know yourself’, ‘identify the barriers’, ‘ask for the support’ and ‘needs for improvement’. In the first part of the summit, participants were informed about HFA strategic initiatives in terms of education, epidemiology, research, quality of care, membership and international connections. Professor Andrew Coats, President of HFA, presented the ‘HFA Roadmap’ and declared that the HFA continues to set the global standard in HF care, education and research. Also, he underlined the firm intention to maintain HFA’s leadership in HF Congresses worldwide. Professor Coats mentioned the role of HFA Scientific Committees to elaborate position papers and consensus documents, some of these with a substantial impact on current HF care.1–9 These documents are produced as the result of a large collaborative effort10 and represent the coordinated work of the HFA in bringing together the considered views of its appointed experts on a range of new, emerging, contentious, or complicated