Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Vascular diseases outside of the heart affect millions of Americans and are a leading cause of death in the US. They include diseases and conditions such as stroke, aneurysm, peripheral artery disease (PAD), and even hypertension. PAD alone costs the healthcare system $21B per year. Many vascular conditions are preventable but have very limited public awareness. Even patients and care providers have limited knowledge about these conditions and how to effectively manage and treat them. There is also a dearth of investment in innovative, patient-centric research, limiting treatment options and long-term efficacy that could meaningfully improve or even save lives. Finally, there is a lack of patient and caregiver input at the decision-making table across vascular healthcare. Vascular Cures is committed to reducing the burden of vascular disease through research, collaboration, and patient empowerment.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Vascular Health Impact Network
The Vascular Health Impact Network (VHIN) is a first-of-its kind forum for leaders in vascular healthcare and research to collaboratively address pressing patient needs, align shared interests and leverage the expertise of this uniquely diverse community. Members include decision-makers representing the key perspectives in vascular care and research including academia, care providers, researchers, regulators, payers and most importantly patient advocates. 2021-2022 efforts will focus on addressing disparities in vascular healthcare.
Wylie Scholar Program
Vascular Cures' Wylie Scholar Program provides financial assistance to outstanding surgeons at the early stage of their careers, to help them develop as academic vascular surgeon-scientists.
As of 2014, we've established a group of 17 surgeon-scientists at 15 institutions around the country who are transforming patient care.
Project Voice
Exercise (walking) therapy has been shown to significantly improve health outcomes in symptomatic PAD patients. Studies have shown that home-based exercise therapy can improve walking endurance and claudication (leg pain) onset time in PAD patients.
Project Voice was designed to offer patients home-based exercise therapy by providing them with a walking activity tracker and a patient interface that offers educational and engagement resources and surveys to collect patient feedback on their health and quality of life.
Vascular Cures has supported two feasibility studies and is currently working with multiple partners to advance research to bring digitally-enabled home-based exercise therapy (DHET) to patients with PAD.
Chronic Limb-Threatening Ischemia Working Group
Chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) is an advanced form of peripheral artery disease (PAD) that can lead to amputation. People living with CLTI have a wealth of lived experiences to share that are distinct from the researchers who design and conduct trials to improve outcomes. Unfortunately, there is a lack of patient participation in research study design and execution. This means researchers struggle to find diverse and representative trial participants, and that study results do not always answer questions that are important to CLTI patients.
To help address this problem, Vascular Cures is convening a Working Group to promote and facilitate CLTI patient engagement in research. This initiative will build capacity to engage CLTI patients’ research as advisers and participants, so that study results align with the needs of patients. Ultimately, this work will create new knowledge and treatments that more closely align with CLTI patient needs and improve health outcomes.
Innovation and Research Summits
Advancing game-changing healthcare collaborations require secure forums for stakeholders to discuss and brainstorm; an environment where fragmentation, silos and inter-organizational competition can be put aside. As a nonprofit without proprietary interests, Vascular Cures is able to establish these multi-specialty, multi-stakeholder discussions and the development of collaborative solutions without a stake in the outcome – other than the benefit of patients.
Vascular Innovation and Research Summits bring together stakeholders across vascular health for shared brainstorming about better ways to collaboratively solve unmet patient needs.
Collaborative Patient-Centered Research (CPCR)
Driving collaboration across research centers and leveraging resources to broadly advance science are centerpieces of the Vascular Cures research portfolio. The Collaborative Patient-Centered Research (CPCR) grants fund multi-institutional high-impact projects that create shareable research assets and generate milestones within two years. For more information on currently funded CPCR projects, please visit https://vascularcures.org/cpcr/.
Patients as Partners
Our Patients as Partners Program is designed to facilitate the engagement of patient advisors in national research and care improvement initiatives. We are also interested in engaging caregivers and family members impacted by vascular disease. We are fostering a community of representative, empowered advocates to claim their seat at the table as true Partners.
Where we work
External reviews

Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of dollars invested in research
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults, Researchers
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Number of groups/individuals benefiting from tools/resources/education materials provided
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Our vision is a world where everyone has the opportunity to enjoy vascular health. Vascular Cures advances our shared goal of collaboratively reducing the burden of vascular disease by convening & aligning key stakeholders around critical needs. We are connecting decision-makers, enabling resource collection & sharing to accelerate solutions, and promoting patient engagement to improve research & care. Our approach to improving vascular healthcare is both for the patient and with the patient – meaning that patient engagement is integral to everything that we do. Through this work we aim to:
- Educate the general public on vascular conditions to improve disease diagnosis and management, especially in vulnerable/at-risk communities
- Empower patients and caregivers on their vascular health journeys through education and engagement
- Fund high-risk, high-impact patient-centric research that can lead to critical new knowledge, technologies, and/or improvements in care
- Engage advocates across healthcare to serve as advisors to researchers and leaders of other national initiatives aiming to improve patient outcomes, but lacking the patient perspective
Ultimately, we want to enable better treatments and care that more closely align with patient needs, moving us closer to a world where everyone has the opportunity to enjoy vascular health.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Vascular Cures is advancing patient-centered research, catalyzing breakthrough collaborations, and empowering patients. These important strategies translate into a number of programs and initiatives:
Education and Awareness: We are creating a gold-standard for vascular educational content that is extremely accessible by directly delivering proprietary content that is interpretable at low reading levels that are patient-centric. Materials such as flyers, videos, and social media posts are all designed and written with the patient in mind and are often co-developed with and/or reviewed by patient advisors.
Patients as Partners: This program recruits, trains, and engages patients and caregivers to advocate for patients like them in national healthcare initiatives and research. Patient Partners make decision-making more patient-centric by advising in activities like trial design, development of educational materials, and clinical guideline updates.
Patient-Centered Research: The Collaborative Patient-Centered Research (CPCR) grants fund multi-institutional high-impact projects that create shareable research assets and generate milestones within two years. Each year, grants are awarded to promising initiatives which promote collaboration and patient-centricity in design and implementation. The Wylie Scholar Program is building a pipeline of innovators in vascular health. We provide 3-year career development grants to outstanding young vascular surgeon-scientists who combine active patient care with academic research.
Vascular Health Impact Network: The Vascular Health Impact Network (VHIN) is a first-of-its-kind forum for leaders in vascular care and research to collaboratively address pressing patient needs, align shared interests, and leverage the expertise of this uniquely diverse community. Members include decision-makers representing the key perspectives in vascular care and research including academia, care providers, researchers, regulators, payers, and most importantly, patient advocates. Our annual Innovation Summits bring these leaders together to discuss and prioritize healthcare needs, which Vascular Cures then advances through grants and special initiatives. The current priority is addressing vascular health inequities in vulnerable communities.
Working Groups: Vascular Cures is a leader in convening diverse stakeholder groups to collectively address priority issues that affect care and research, and ultimately vascular patients. One of our recent working groups engaged clinicians, researchers, patients, and caregivers on Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) for PAD. Our ongoing Chronic Limb-Threatening Ischemia (CLTI) Working Group is developing resources and building capacity to promote and facilitate patient engagement in research.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Given our ability to pursue solutions without proprietary interests, Vascular Cures is uniquely able to drive collaborations that accelerate patient-centered results. Our national network of experts represents more than 100 premier medical institutions, government agencies and industry leaders across North America. As a neutral and trusted member of the vascular health ecosystem, Vascular Cures facilitates novel collaborations between the most influential parties in healthcare including patients, health systems, payers, biopharma, device manufacturers, multiple care specialties, researchers and regulatory agencies.
Vascular Cures is composed of a small but dedicated team, whose commitment to patient-centric research and care has enabled innovative and effective programmatic work. Combining several areas of expertise, the Vascular Cures team masterfully develops and maintains relationships with several kinds of stakeholders, including patient partners, and leverages these relationships to bolster collaborative research, education, awareness, and empowerment.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Vascular Cures drives change within our mission pillars: empowerment, collaboration, & cures. We have impacted the lives of patients and caregivers by empowering them to advocate for themselves and their communities and catalyzing collaborative patient-centered research projects to improve quality of life. Highlights of our impact include:
Empowerment: Every year over 200,000 people around the world visit our website to learn about vascular disease and access critical resources. Our patient advocates have improved over 20 research, education, and public health initiatives as advisors.
Collaboration: Our Innovation Summits have launched 10 collaborative, high-impact research projects and special patient initiatives. We convene our network of 120 leading vascular healthcare and research organizations with patients to advance high-need solutions.
Cures: We have invested over $13M in high-impact, patient-centered research. Our career development grant recipients have generated $107M in additional research funding, a 30:1 return on investment.
Vascular Cures has ambitious goals for the future as well. We are growing our Patients as Partners program to engage more advocates and external partners to improve more projects. We intend to expand our reach to include even more diverse and representative patients, so that every voice can be heard when decisions are being made about healthcare. We’re also building our own internal resources to educate, train, and empower patient advocates.
The Vascular Health Impact Network will continue to advance conversations and projects to address vascular health inequities. Our hope is to continue to diversify this network, specifically engaging more primary and community-based care representatives. The Network convenes to discuss essential topics related to vascular care and research, and this informs both research and non-research grants for patient-centric projects. By including more stakeholders and increasing the scope of our grants, Vascular Cures plays a role in improving research and care in terms of collaboration and patient-centricity.
Expanding our reach into at-risk communities to raise awareness and education around vascular health is a continual goal. We have just launched a two-year national PAD empowerment initiative that focuses on vulnerable communities. Other ongoing objectives include improving our education & awareness materials by conducting gap analyses and consequently co-developing or updating materials with patients to ensure their needs are being met (e.g. translating resources into other languages). We are also building a network of community-based organizations in order to better reach underserved communities across the country. This network will function to co-develop and implement lifestyle management models for patients with vascular diseases such as PAD.
In the future, we will expand national presence across industry leaders, patients, researchers, and healthcare partners.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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Who are the people you serve with your mission?
We serve populations who have higher-than-average risk for vascular diseases outside of the heart, as well as patients and/or caregivers that have lived experience with vascular diseases outside of the heart.
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How is your organization collecting feedback from the people you serve?
Electronic surveys (by email, tablet, etc.), Paper surveys, Focus groups or interviews (by phone or in person), Community meetings/Town halls, Constituent (client or resident, etc.) advisory committees,
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals,
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What significant change resulted from feedback?
Our patient partners provided excellent feedback on our website, which was relaunched in 2022. They reviewed the initial drafts of the website and provided feedback not only on the layout/graphics, but on the content and what they were looking for specifically. As a result, we updated the language that viewers are first presented with (moving away from sweeping vision statements about a world free of vascular disease, towards more realistic and focused language on what we can actually impact).
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With whom is the organization sharing feedback?
The people we serve, Our staff, Our board, Our funders, Our community partners,
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How has asking for feedback from the people you serve changed your relationship?
At Vascular Cures, we made the decision to make patient-centricity a built-in rule with everything we do - even if it's provider or industry-facing. To this end, we have had patient partners review things like grant applications for large empowerment projects and provider-facing educational material. This consistent effort to include patient/caregiver input has built a solid foundation of trust and a genuine sense of partnership with the members of our patient partner community. They are comfortable telling us when we get something wrong, or need to adjust. We have invested in this authentic partnership building for over a year through our Patients as Partners program, and the result is a community of engagement-ready individuals who feel comfortable sitting at the decision-making table.
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback,
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection,
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
VASCULAR CURES
Board of directorsas of 07/26/2022
Edward Yu
Ronald Stoney
Michael Conte
UCSF
Douglas Grey
Wendy Hitchcock
David Rae
KPMG
Edward Yu
PWC
Lilia Martinez-Coburn
Kevin Heath
OptumCare
Margaret Wong
Gilead
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? No -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? No -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? No -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? No -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
The organization's co-leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data