Impact of COVID-19 on global diversity in scientific contributions in American cardiology meetings: Geographical and economic perspectives

Abstract

Objective: To determine the global diversity in geographical and economic class of countries contributed to group of American cardiology meetings in 2019 and 2020 (prior to and during COVID-19 pandemic). Methods: Cross sectional recording of contributing authors’ countries for abstracts of three American College of Cardiology Congress (ACC), Heart Failure Society of America meeting (HFSA) and Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting. Analysis of these contributions according to continent and World Bank Class of the contributing countries was done. Results: total 10,609 contributions from 95 countries were analysed. After excluding US, Asia had the highest contribution to ACC meetings in 2019 (45.44%) and 2020 (42.63%), p = 0.0002, while Europe had the highest contributions to both HFSA (58.78% in 2019 and 47.42% in 2020), p = 0.07 and TCT (63.25% in 2019 and 55.86% in 2020), p = 0.0002. Middle income countries (MIC) contributions increased from 14.96%, 10.02%, 6.06% in 2019 (pre COVID19) to 19.29%, 19.34%, 17.52% in 2020 (COVID19 era) in ACC, HFSA and TCT respectively. Conclusion: Researchers from low- and middle-income countries are under-represented in high impact American cardiology meetings with higher contributions in COVID-19 era. It is pivotal to enhance collaboration with them to reflect the real solidarity for which we are calling during and beyond the pandemic.

Keywords

• Equity
• COVID-19
• Disparity
• Developing countries
• World Bank