The urgency behind the meeting is grounded in stark epidemiological reality. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, and the burden falls disproportionately on low-income, low-middle-income and middle-income countries and regions, where health systems often face the double challenge of rising disease prevalence and constrained resources. An updated analysis of the global burden of cardiovascular diseases covering 204 countries and territories, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2025, underscored just how unevenly the toll of heart disease is distributed. It is precisely this disparity that the organizers of ACC Latin America 2026 hope to address by bringing world-class education and evidence-based strategies directly to the clinicians who care for the affected populations.

Clara Inés Saldarriaga Giraldo, MD, FACC, co-chair of ACC Latin America 2026 and past president of the Colombian Society of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery, framed the partnership as a milestone for regional collaboration. According to Saldarriaga Giraldo, partnering with the American College of Cardiology represents an important opportunity to strengthen collaboration and advance cardiovascular care across Latin America, and hosting the conference in Colombia brings leading experts and the latest scientific knowledge closer to the regional cardiovascular community. She emphasized that the meeting also provides a platform to showcase the expertise, research and perspectives emerging from Colombia and Latin America, and expressed particular enthusiasm for the exchange of ideas and experiences among colleagues from across the region and around the world.

The scientific program spans the entire field of cardiovascular medicine, reflecting the breadth of conditions that cardiovascular clinicians confront daily, from coronary artery disease and heart failure to arrhythmias, valvular disease, prevention and imaging. Rather than organizing content around narrow subspecialty silos, the meeting is designed to engage the whole cardiology care team, acknowledging that modern cardiovascular care depends on physicians, allied professionals and trainees working in concert. Attendees will be able to question experts directly on the clinical issues most relevant to patient care today, while also gaining insight into strategies tailored to the specific structural, economic and epidemiological challenges facing Latin American health systems.

Among the featured sessions is one devoted to critical care cardiology in Latin America, described as expert-led education designed to meet regional needs. Critical cardiovascular illness, including acute myocardial infarction, cardiogenic shock and decompensated heart failure, demands rapid, coordinated and resource-intensive intervention, and the session acknowledges that the optimal delivery of such care depends on infrastructure and training realities that vary widely across the region. Another headline session tackles artificial intelligence in cardiology under a deliberately skeptical title: what is real, what is ready and what is next. As machine learning tools move from research papers into clinical workflows, that framing signals a commitment to separating validated, deployable technology from speculative hype, a distinction with direct consequences for patient safety and resource allocation.

Prevention across the life course also takes center stage in a session addressing an integrated challenge in subclinical primary prevention, linking the heart health of the young with the brain health of the elderly. The session reflects a growing scientific consensus that atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular processes begin silently decades before symptomatic disease, and that risk factors acting early in life shape both cardiac and cerebrovascular outcomes late in life. By framing heart and brain health as a single integrated prevention challenge, the program highlights the continuum of vascular disease and the importance of intervening before clinical events occur, a message with particular resonance in populations where hypertension, diabetes and obesity are increasingly prevalent at younger ages.

The meeting will also serve as a stage for homegrown science. Participants will have the opportunity to share and learn about new research from across the region through abstract and case presentations, giving Latin American investigators visibility for work conducted in their own clinical settings. Among the clinical cases and posters scheduled for presentation are an updated dose-response meta-analysis of ultra-processed food consumption and incident cardiovascular disease with risk stratification by food subcategory; a multi-regional cross-sectional study of biomass smoke exposure and cardiovascular outcomes across rural and urban Mexican regions; and an analysis of sex disparities among young STEMI patients across Latin America. Each of these contributions speaks directly to regional realities, from dietary transitions and household air pollution to inequities in the recognition and treatment of heart attacks in young women. All clinical cases and poster abstracts are embargoed until Thursday, September 17, 2026, at 7 a.m. Colombia Time, or 8 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

Education at the meeting is not confined to lectures. Three ACC Latin America Chapter teams, each composed of three Fellows-in-Training, will compete in ACC FIT Jeopardy, a gameshow-style contest quizzing contestants on topics ranging from imaging and prevention to interventional cardiology. The competition format is more than entertainment; it tests rapid clinical reasoning under pressure and gives the next generation of cardiologists a visible platform before their senior colleagues. The winning team will earn the opportunity to compete again at the ACC Annual Scientific Session, ACC.27, in Houston in April 2027, extending the regional competition onto the global stage. At the Convocation ceremony, the ACC will also recognize individuals from throughout the region who have earned the distinguished Fellow of the ACC designation, a credential that recognizes a sustained commitment to improving patient care and outcomes.

Juan C. Lopez-Mattei, MD, FACC, co-chair of ACC Latin America 2026, described the conference as part of a longer arc of collaboration, noting that ACC Latin America conferences help connect regional and global expertise so the cardiovascular community can better serve patients across diverse communities. He pointed out that the 2026 meeting in Medellín marks a decade of collaboration focused on transforming cardiovascular care, and said he looks forward to engaging with colleagues from across Latin America and around the world to share cutting-edge science, practical education and innovative approaches to improving cardiovascular care. That decade-long trajectory suggests the meeting is not a one-off event but the latest installment of a sustained effort to build durable educational and scientific networks across the hemisphere.

The institutional weight behind the meeting is considerable. The American College of Cardiology, for more than 75 years, has supported a community of over 60,000 cardiovascular professionals in more than 140 countries through education and advocacy, professional credentials, clinical guidance, the JACC journals, the NCDR registries, accreditation services and a global network of Chapters and Sections. By convening that infrastructure in Medellín alongside the Colombian Society of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery, ACC Latin America 2026 aims to do more than disseminate knowledge; it seeks to equip the region’s cardiovascular workforce with the evidence, tools and connections needed to bend the curve of the world’s leading cause of death. For the clinicians gathering in Colombia this September, the measure of success will be written not in the conference hall but in the clinics and catheterization labs where Latin American patients receive their care.

Subject of Research: The ACC Latin America 2026 cardiovascular conference in Medellín, Colombia

Article Title: ACC Latin America 2026 brings together experts to tackle the region’s cardiovascular challenges

Article References: ACC Latin America 2026 brings together experts to tackle the region’s cardiovascular challenges. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: ACC Latin America 2026, cardiovascular disease, Medellín, Colombia, American College of Cardiology, global burden of disease, prevention, artificial intelligence in cardiology, critical care cardiology, health disparities, Fellows-in-Training, scientific conference

The research, led by D. A. Grajales-González of the Environmental School at Universidad de Antioquia, draws on equivalent black carbon (eBC) measurements collected continuously between 2019 and 2023 at an urban background site in Medellín. Black carbon, the light-absorbing soot released by diesel engines, biomass fires, and other incomplete combustion processes, has long been recognized as both a potent climate warmer and a meaningful tracer of the most harmful components of particulate pollution. Yet despite its importance, eBC has remained poorly characterized in tropical cities hemmed in by mountains, where meteorology and emission patterns differ sharply from the temperate cities where most monitoring networks were designed.

The study’s methodological core rests on three complementary approaches. First, the team applied spectral source apportionment using aethalometer data, exploiting the fact that fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning absorb light differently across wavelengths. The absorption Ångström exponent, a spectral fingerprint of the aerosol, averaged 1.05 with a standard deviation of just 0.12 across all periods, a value squarely in the range of fossil fuel sources and a clear signal that traffic and other diesel-dominated combustion dominated Medellín’s black carbon load throughout the five years. Biomass burning, by contrast, emerged as an episodic regional modifier, injecting soot from fires that sweep across northern South America during certain seasons rather than as a steady background contribution.

Second, the researchers translated their concentration data into a framework designed to make the invisible visceral: passive smoking equivalence. Building on earlier work that expressed air pollution health risks in terms of the number of passively smoked cigarettes a person would inhale, the team calculated that Medellín’s baseline urban exposure amounted to 10.1 passive cigarette equivalents per day. During the COVID-19 mobility restrictions of 2020, that figure fell to 6.3, and after restrictions lifted it rebounded to 8.0. The comparison is deliberately provocative, designed to communicate risk in terms the public intuitively grasps, and it makes plain that simply living in this Andean valley imposes a respiratory burden comparable to sharing space with a chain smoker.

The pandemic, tragic as it was, handed atmospheric scientists an unprecedented natural experiment. When Colombia’s mobility restrictions brought much of Medellín’s traffic to a standstill, median eBC concentrations dropped by 37 percent. But here the study delivers its most sobering finding: even under maximum suppression of human activity, the temporal structure of exposure remained essentially intact, and 56.1 percent of hourly observations still exceeded 1 microgram per cubic meter. In other words, the valley’s meteorology, its residual emissions, and its regional smoke intrusions conspired to keep black carbon levels elevated even when the city’s engines largely fell silent. The lockdown did not erase the pollution problem; it merely dented it.

Those dents, however, translated into measurable health benefits. Applying concentration-response functions to the observed reductions, the researchers estimate that between 78 and 198 cardiovascular deaths were averted during the restriction period, depending on which exposure-response scenario is assumed. The range reflects genuine scientific uncertainty in how mortality responds to changes in particulate pollution, but even the conservative end of the estimate underscores a critical policy point: relatively short-term reductions in combustion emissions produce immediate, quantifiable cardiovascular dividends. Black carbon has been repeatedly linked to adverse cardiovascular outcomes, in some analyses serving as a better predictor of harm than bulk particulate mass metrics such as PM10 or PM2.5, precisely because it tracks fresh combustion particles rich in toxic compounds.

The third analytical pillar was spatial. By comparing the urban background site with near-road monitoring, the team tracked how exposure heterogeneity across the valley evolved through the pandemic. Before the restrictions, near-road concentrations ran 3.6 times higher than background levels. After the restrictions ended, that ratio expanded to 4.66, indicating that the gap between what a pedestrian on a busy avenue inhales and what a resident of a quieter neighborhood breathes widened rather than narrowed as traffic returned. The perturbation, in effect, revealed how strongly Medellín’s exposure landscape is stratified, with the burden of traffic-related soot concentrated on those who live and work closest to major roadways.

Medellín’s geography amplifies every one of these dynamics. The city sits in the Aburrá Valley, a deep, elongated canyon whose steep walls restrict ventilation and trap pollutants beneath temperature inversions, particularly during the drier months. Previous research in the valley has documented how regional aerosol transport and limited vertical mixing conspire to produce severe pollution episodes, and how long-range transport of biomass burning emissions from northern South America elevates hazardous components of fine particulate matter across the region. The new study fits squarely into this picture, showing that while local fossil fuel combustion supplies the persistent black carbon backbone, regional fires periodically ratchet concentrations upward in ways that local authorities cannot directly control.

What distinguishes this work is its argument about infrastructure. The authors contend that continuous aethalometer deployments at urban background sites, when complemented by near-road monitoring, provide a viable and reproducible framework for characterizing black carbon exposure structure in tropical cities with limited observational resources. This is a significant claim for the many rapidly growing cities of the Global South, where comprehensive chemical speciation networks are often financially out of reach but where the health stakes of combustion pollution are highest. A single well-maintained instrument, paired with strategic roadside sampling, appears sufficient to reconstruct the essential anatomy of a city’s soot exposure, its sources, its rhythms, and its spatial gradients.

The implications ripple outward from public health into climate policy. Black carbon is among the most potent short-lived climate forcers, and curbing it delivers a rare double dividend: near-term warming mitigation alongside immediate reductions in cardiovascular mortality. The Medellín findings suggest that diesel-dominated urban fleets are the primary lever, since fossil fuel combustion dominated every period of the five-year record regardless of season or pandemic conditions. They also caution against complacency, because the persistence of elevated exposure even during a historic mobility collapse reveals how deeply embedded combustion sources are in the valley’s atmospheric system. For the residents of Medellín, the message distilled into the study’s cigarette-equivalent metric is difficult to ignore: cleaning up this city’s air would amount to taking ten cigarettes a day out of every pair of lungs in the valley, and the pandemic briefly proved that doing so saves lives.

Subject of Research: Black carbon exposure and its health risk implications in the tropical urban valley of Medellín, Colombia

Article Title: From atmospheric loading to passive smoking: Black Carbon exposure as a health risk indicator in Medellín, Colombia

Article References: Grajales-González, D. A., Cañón-Barriga, J. E., Gómez-Marín, M., Blanco-Donado, E. P., & Ramírez, O. (2026). From atmospheric loading to passive smoking: Black Carbon exposure as a health risk indicator in Medellín, Colombia. Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, 19(10), Article 225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-02116-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11869-026-02116-z

Keywords: black carbon, Medellín, air quality, COVID-19 lockdown, cardiovascular mortality, passive smoking equivalence, aethalometer, source apportionment, urban air pollution, Aburrá Valley, biomass burning, environmental health