February 1 kicks off American Heart Month with the 40th Knoxville Heart Ball, Knoxville’s largest fundraising event for the American Heart Association (AHA). Held this year at The Mill and Mine, the Knoxville Heart Ball honors the research and work, the donors and volunteers, and the lives saved and improved because of the efforts of East Tennessee healthcare professionals dedicated to the fight against cardiovascular disease.
Knoxville was recently named a community impact market. “This designation meant we could hire a community impact director who devotes 100% of her time partnering with organizations with similar health goals,” explains Knoxville AHA Executive Director Beverly Miller. Local partnership advocacy supports CPR education and AED (automatic external defibrillator) awareness.
“We assess corporate workplaces, youth sports networks, and other community organizations to support AED placement.” Recently, AHA gave AEDs to Girl Scouts of the Southern Appalachians and Wesley House Community Center. Other education initiatives involve smoking and vaping, and understanding and controlling blood pressure.
“We also did a needs assessment and discovered many area food pantries were open to serving healthier foods, but that meant refrigeration,” she adds. “Second Harvest could provide fresh fruits and vegetables but the food pantries could not accept them because of shelf life. We have gifted 32 refrigeration units to area food pantries so they could offer healthier options.”
Beverly reports one in three Knoxvillians suffer from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and/or obesity–risk factors leading to cardiovascular disease. “The heart of our organization has always been research and that is the largest bucket of where our dollars go. But a growing percentage of our fundraising stays here to fund education and resources.” 2024 was AHA’s centennial year and Beverly credits the nonprofit’s longevity and advancements in research, education, and lives saved as principal reasons they attract so many volunteers, donors, and community partners to the fight. “We’re grateful to have Interventional Cardiologists Dr. Josh Todd and Dr. Ayaz Rahman serving in leadership positions as co-chairs for the 2025 Heart Ball. These physicians do great work every day, but giving their time that we know is in short supply, for a call they feel so passionate about, means so much to our team.”
2025 Co-Chair Ayaz Rahman, MD Covenant Medical Group
“I have been involved in some capacity with AHA and research since I was a fellow at Emory University,” explains Dr. Ayaz Rahman. “Two years of my fellowship were dedicated to research in vascular health, in particular, translational vascular biology. My lab was funded by various entities, one of which was an AHA Young Investigators Award.”
“All physicians agree providing the best clinical care is of the utmost importance, but maybe more important is advancing the technology and science–and AHA is the foremost entity that does that in our country,” Ayaz adds. “In 2024 through AHA and others, we have been able to improve technological advances in valvular heart disease, such that a transcatheter aortic heart valve delivered through the groin is the gold standard way of treating certain aortic valve disease in patients 65 years and older.”
“It was important for me to partner with an organization that not only had interest in advancing the health and care of our community, but also nationally through research. And it was important for me to participate in research locally so we could continue to provide those advanced therapeutics to our patients. There was no better way to pursue my interest in delivering the best care possible than to partner with AHA, particularly with their grassroots efforts in CPR and AED awareness, healthy diet and nutritional security.”
“I’m proud to work alongside Bev and her team, who not only represent AHA nationally but work to partner with local organizations on resources such as AED placement. It’s important to find community leaders to be champions of the technology, teachers and influencers,” he adds. Ayaz notes that the husband of a cardiac event survivor who will be featured at the Heart Ball was able to perform CPR on his wife after being trained by an AHA-certified CPR trainer.
“Cardiac disease is very humbling. It affects all of us and our loved ones. In a world where there may be different health care systems and physicians, the spirit of cardiac health care should be one of humility and coming together for a single purpose to treat and eradicate cardiovascular disease.”
Ayaz believes moving into its second century, the elimination of health care disparities will be the focus of future AHA research and therapeutics. “Disease affects people differently–through gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographic location. The ability to recognize those disparities and bridge the gap in therapeutics will help. As we are advancing research in genomics and understanding DNA, that’s where we can target therapies in various areas of our community.”
2025 Co-Chair Joshua W. Todd, MD Covenant Medical Group
“Everybody is impacted by heart disease and the AHA is at the center of it all,” says Dr. Josh Todd. “From a research perspective over the past 100 years, the AHA impacts everything we do in cardiology–from medications we use for heart failure developed in the 1950s, to early studies in artificial heart valves in the 1960s, to the drug coating on the stents we use every day developed in the early 2000s.”
“Interventional cardiologists perform less invasive procedures like balloon angioplasty/ placement of intracoronary stents, and now the minimally invasive replacement and repair of heart valves. So, yes, my job is impacted by all the great research AHA funds, but my why for volunteering with AHA includes education. Cardiologists can educate our patients, but not at this scope and level within the community.”
Organizing the details for the 40th Knoxville Heart Ball in the spirit of everything the AHA represents is important to the leadership team, Josh believes. “It’s an evening to fundraise, honor, and thank everyone involved in taking care of our community’s heart patients, allowing us to reflect on the work we have done and how much more there is to do. The Heart Ball is a great event where all the health systems in Knoxville come together–UT, Tennova, Covenant–with one focus and passion for our community.”
“AHA has an important message to promote,” Josh explains, “as a nonprofit that focuses purely on continual research and education on heart attacks and strokes that can’t be monetized but impacts thousands of patients nationally as well as in our own community.”
As 2025 kicks off its second century, Josh explains, “All the things AHA is investing in right now are so exciting–biochemical factors that can reduce inflammatory components in heart failure, arrhythmia signals within the heart, and over 7,000 more basic science trials that will impact us 20 years from now. With a heart attack you have heart muscle death. How do we get those cells to regenerate? It’s a difficult answer in cardiology that has to start at the molecular level – which takes lots of time and financial backing for these basic questions.”
“I don’t know where their research is going to go–which is a good thing–because there are lots of implications for Americans, but on a molecular level. Before, it was ‘We’ll make a stent, or we’ll make a valve.’ Now it’s ‘We’ll build some stem cells, or we’ll give you a chemical that makes your heart regenerate.’ That’s what’s exciting–things we don’t know American Heart Association research will discover.” For more information, go to Heart.org
We’re grateful to have Dr. Josh Todd and Dr. Ayaz Rahman co-chair the 2025 Knoxville Heart Ball. — Beverly Miller, Executive Director