Shelley Wood to Join CRF as Editorial Director

Amid the energy of TCT 2015, CRF is welcoming a new member to its team. Award-winning medical journalist Shelley Wood will join the organization as editorial director on Thursday, October 15. 

Wood will lead CRF’s department of editorial services and be responsible for developing original, thought-provoking and clinically relevant content for TCTMD.com, the leading online resource for cutting-edge news and information in interventional cardiovascular medicine. She will also play an integral role in ongoing enhancements of the TCTMD website.

Time to grow 

“Our work supporting CRF’s editorial needs takes on many forms—from creating editorially independent news coverage for TCTMD to writing in-depth meeting summaries for the interventional community and producing the TCT Daily,” said Caitlin E. Cox, manager of academic content for the CRF Center for Education and news editor of TCTMD. “With Shelley’s expertise, we will be able to broaden what we do even further.”

TCTMD has long been an essential resource for interventional cardiologists, said Cox, who has overseen the department since last year’s loss of esteemed News Editor Jason Kahn. Since 2008, TCTMD has grown from a single-person operation to a team of four dedicated reporters producing news and features for a large and diverse global audience. In addition to Cox, the editorial team consists of journalists Yael L. Maxwell, L.A. McKeown and Todd Neale.

Wood is best known for her leadership at theheart.org, which merged with WebMD’s Medscape Cardiology in 2013. She joined theheart.org as a journalist in 2000 and became the site’s managing editor in 2009. Three years later, Wood was named news director for the newly launched Medscape Deutschland and, in 2013, was promoted to senior director, global news, a role that included oversight of Medscape France.

“We are very excited to welcome Shelley to CRF,” said Jack Lewin, MD, CRF’s chief executive officer and president. “Her knowledge and experience will be invaluable assets to TCTMD as we seek to strengthen and expand the site’s coverage to include news and analyses from a broader range of topics including general cardiology, health policy and advocacy, regulatory issues, medical innovation, digital health and industry. This will allow the wider audience of general cardiologists, primary care physicians, intensivists, hospitalists, internists, nurses and, very importantly, the ‘heart team’ to stay current on the interrelated aspects of interventional cardiovascular medicine.”

Under Wood’s leadership, “TCTMD will enhance its position as the ‘go to’ global resource for interventional cardiovascular medicine,” said TCT Director Gregg W. Stone, MD, who is CRF’s immediate past chairman and co-director of medical research and education. “Her experience in medical journalism and expertise in cardiovascular medicine will bolster TCTMD’s reputation as an independent, objective source of sophisticated and insightful information for health care professionals.”

Wood described TCTMD as “a perfect fit” for her. “Interventional cardiology has been my beat within cardiovascular disease reporting from the beginning of my medical journalism career. It has always been a field of tremendous growth, innovation, controversy and debate—a reporter’s dream,” she said. “I’m thrilled to be offered the opportunity to lead a team of journalists who know this field inside out. They’ve made TCTMD the one-stop shop for interventional cardiologists seeking information in their subspecialty.

“My hope is to expand the site’s reach and impact, making it a source of breaking news as well as in-depth features, analysis and discussion,” she continued. “I am excited to help take TCTMD to the next level by making it the source not only for interventional cardiologists but also for a broader audience—anyone seeking lively, thought-provoking and rigorously objective journalism covering interventional cardiology.”