Seven Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center clinicians educated an enthusiastic audience from the Boston area Russian community about healthy aging at a special forum March 6.

The free patient education event at the Brookline Holiday Inn was organized and spearheaded by cardiologist Eli Gelfand, MD, director of ambulatory cardiology at the CardioVascular Institute (CVI) at BIDMC. Approximately 130 community members, mostly from Brookline, Brighton and the North Shore attended. The speakers gave their lectures entirely in Russian.

"One of our purposes was to make sure Russians understand the wide array of services that are delivered at BIDMC by caregivers who are native Russian speakers," said Gelfand, who founded the  Russian Cardiovascular Clinic within the CVI three years ago. "As a result of the forum, 30 attendees expressed interest in seeing one of our doctors."

The event was cosponsored by the Department of Medicine and the CVI.

According to Find a Doc, 32 physicians in the Beth Israel Deaconess system speak at least some Russian. Speakers at the event in addition to Dr. Gelfand were  Larissa Engleman, NP (cardiology); Evgeniy Filin, MD (psychiatry); Alexander S. Goldfarb, MD (Nephrology); Elena Volozhanina, MD (internal medicine); Vitaliy Y. Poylin, MD (surgery); and Eugene L. Vaninov, MD (internal medicine and cardiology).

Topics included recognizing heart disease in middle age, preventing cancer, aging gracefully and keeping your mind healthy as you age.