Dr. Jeffrey Popma brings 15 years of clinical, education, and research expertise to enhance patient care at Caritas Christi Health Care

Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center (CSEMC), Caritas Carney Hospital (CCH), and Caritas Christi Health Care (CCHC) are excited to announce the appointment of Jeffrey J. Popma, M.D., as director of Invasive Cardiovascular Services for the Caritas Cardiovascular Center at CSEMC and CCH. Dr. Popma will coordinate and standardize high quality and integrated invasive cardiovascular care within the Caritas network in collaboration with the Catheterization Laboratory directors at Carney Hospital, Norwood Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton and Holy Family Hospital and Medical Center in Methuen, along with Lawrence General Hospital.

“Dr. Popma is an internationally renowned interventional cardiologist, bringing to Caritas Christi the latest training and expertise,” said Dr. James Morgan, CSEMC’s chief of the Consolidated Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and director of the CCHC Cardiovascular Center. “We are excited to welcome this dynamic new physician to our outstanding medical staff. His reputation as a pioneering clinician, passionate educator, and creative researcher will markedly enhance our cardiovascular expertise.”

According to Popma, “High-quality cardiovascular care can now be found in our community hospitals, offering patients more convenient and personalized care. I am humbled by the opportunity to work with our community hospital physician partners in developing standardized, evidence-based interventional cardiovascular care for our patients. Education and training are critical components of this effort.”

Appointments

Dr. Popma has been appointed overall director of the Consolidated Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories. “There are particular challenges for developing central interventional cardiovascular services in the current era of regionalized care. I look forward to embracing the fundamentals - developing close physician relationships within the communities we serve, facilitating access to our hospitals for referring physicians, patients, and their families, and providing tertiary cardiovascular support for our community hospitals,” says Popma. “This is a tremendous opportunity for career development and mentorship for physicians entering interventional practice, and we hope to build the interventional cardiovascular services at CSEMC and CCH over the next decade. This is a huge opportunity for me personally and professionally.”

Dr. Popma will also serve as director of the Caritas Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Education and Training, a facility based at CSEMC, dedicated to training in advanced cardiovascular techniques for interventional cardiologists, vascular, and cardiovascular surgeons. “I am very excited about developing our training Center, which will focus on both basic and advanced cardiovascular interventional procedures. Team training is a critical component of the teaching effort, and our catheterization laboratory teams will learn to function as a single unit to enhance patient outcomes. At the end of the day, it is all about patient safety. Evidence-based procedural protocols and state-of-the-art simulation training will be essential features of this advanced cardiovascular training effort,” says Popma.

Industry Expertise and Education

Dr. Popma was most recently the director of Interventional Cardiology and Director of the Interventional Cardiology Fellowship Training Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he will continue his collaborative research efforts with its Angiographic Core Laboratory. “I look forward to future collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and its staff, all of whom I respect greatly. I am fortunate to have been part of an academic environment that has been at the forefront of cardiovascular care for the past three decades.”

Dr. Popma received a B.A. in Economics at Stanford University and graduated Alpha Omega Alpha from Indiana University Medical School. Dr. Popma completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at University of Texas-Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX, where he served as the chief medical resident under the direction of Donald Seldin, M.D. He then completed his Cardiology Fellowship at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and obtained his Interventional Cardiology Training at the University of Michigan Medical Center under the supervision of Eric Topol, M.D. Dr. Popma joined the staff at the Washington Hospital Center, in Washington, D.C., where he established the Angiographic Core Laboratory that served as the central analysis laboratory for a number of new coronary devices, including coronary stents, and completed more than 300 studies that have been submitted to the FDA.

Dr. Popma has served as the past-president of the Society for Cardiac Angiography and Intervention and currently serves as chairman of the American College of Cardiology Cardiac Catheterization Committee and Ad Hoc Committee on Simulation Training. Dr. Popma is currently the chairman of the Budget Committee for the Society for Cardiac Angiographic and Intervention.

Dr. Popma has an extensive commitment to national teaching and education and was the program co-chairman for the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions National Meeting (1996) and the Interventional Programs for the American College of Cardiology ACCIS2000 and ACCIS2001. He currently serves on the Program Committee of the American College of Cardiology I2 2007 Summit. He is the course director for the SCAI Complex Coronary Complications (C3) Summit that is attended by more than 120 graduating interventional cardiology fellows each year. Dr. Popma currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Interventional Fellows Institute, a web-based learning and evaluation center for Interventional Cardiology Fellows.

Dr. Popma has co-authored a number of review guidelines that have been used by interventional cardiologists to prepare for the Added Qualification in Interventional Cardiology Examination. He was the editor of the American College of Cardiology Interventional Cardiology Literature Review (2000), co-editor of the American College of Cardiology Catheterization Self Assessment Program (CATH-SAP-II), co-authored the Cardiac Catheterization and Coronary Intervention section of the ACC Self Assessment Program-6 (ACCSAP-6), and is a co-editor for CATHSAP-III. Dr. Popma has authored more than 280 peer reviewed manuscripts and written authoritative chapters on “Coronary Angiography and Intravascular Ultrasound” and “Coronary and Valvular Intervention” in the recent editions of Heart Disease (Eds: Braunwald ED, Bonow R, Zipes D, and Libby PL).

For more information or to speak with Dr. Popma, please contact Caritas St. Elizabeth’s at 617-779-6098.

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