A history of the American Heart Association's Council on Clinical Cardiology.

This essay reviews the founding and early history of the Council on Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association (AHA), the largest of the AHA's 14 councils. Based on archival research, it stresses the factors that led to the council's formation and shaped its agenda. The council was established in the context of the AHA's transition from a professional society to a voluntary health organization in 1948. But the direct stimulus for its creation was the American College of Cardiology's (ACC) first membership drive 3 years later. When the AHA's Section (later Council) on Clinical Cardiology was formally established in 1952, its official purpose was to "facilitate and encourage investigation, prevention, treatment and education in the field of clinical cardiology." Originally strained, the relations between the AHA and the ACC improved as the organizations came to view each other as potential partners rather than rivals.