Frank Cetta, MD
Board President
2013–present

“Volunteering with Heart to Heart has been a win-win-win experience for me. I help diagnose critically ill children in underserved areas, so they can receive the care they need. I help teach and train new teams of pediatric cardiac specialists—and admire their determination. Together, we are helping develop self-sustaining cardiac centers so local families will have access to world-class life-saving treatment for generations to come.”

Dr. Frank Cetta has been a Heart to Heart medical volunteer for 20 years and counting. His versatility as a pediatric cardiologist and an adult congenital specialist is matched by his talent for teamwork and his passion for teaching. Dr. Cetta has assumed a pivotal role in helping Heart to Heart guide multiple cardiac programs to reach self-sustainability. He has examined thousands of young patients at our partner sites in Russia and Latin America and taught hundreds of cardiac specialists how to improve their skills. Furthermore, Dr. Cetta has been a strategic recruiter for Heart to Heart, enlisting several well-suited colleagues who have become some of our most dedicated medical volunteers.

Dr. Cetta has been part of our Costa Rica team since the beginning of our educational collaborations there, volunteering on seven cardiac training missions to date. He has also organized scholar-exchange observerships for several Costa Rican colleagues at his home institution, the Mayo Clinic. Most notably, he arranged for cardiologist Carlos Mas to accompany a teenaged patient to Mayo for a catheter-based intervention (not yet available in Costa Rica). Dr. Mas’s in-person observership then enabled him to successfully perform the procedure in Costa Rica, a momentous advance for the cardiac community there.

As a key leader of our Into the Heartland Campaign (2002–2019), Dr. Cetta led all seven of Heart to Heart’s annual surgical-educational missions (2006–2012) to Tomsk, Siberia. Under Dr. Cetta’s guidance, our colleagues in Tomsk not only dramatically increased their program capacity, but also established their center as a teaching site for specialists from all over Russia and beyond. Dr. Cetta went on to assume the role of lead pediatric cardiologist for our then-new collaboration in Kaliningrad, in Russia’s Northwestern Federal District. Previously, Dr. Cetta had been instrumental in launching our first adult congenital program in St. Petersburg.

Dr. Cetta is an invaluable member of our team and our Board—and an esteemed repository of institutional knowledge. His humility and generosity are matched only by his grace under pressure. We are profoundly grateful for his decades of contributions.