Our NIH-funded Cardiovascular Undergraduate Research Initiative fOr Underrepresented Students (CURIOUS) program provides minority college students with hands-on training in cardiovascular research and exposure to a variety of science career options at LSU Health Shreveport.  The intramural Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships couple with an NIH-funded Multidisciplinary Training in Cardiovascular Pathophysiology (MTCP) T32 Program to provide an excellent training environment to prepare trainees for careers in cardiovascular biomedical research.   The NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Redox Biology and Cardiovascular Disease provides significant funding to early career CCDS faculty seeking their first R01 award.  In addition, the CCDS provides a variety of intramural research grants for training, project development, and collaborative research opportunities. Together with the COBRE grant, the CCDS houses multiple state-of-the-art core facilities, such as the Animal Phenotyping and Histology Core, the Redox Molecular Signaling Core, the Surgical Models Core, the Virus Production Core, and the Electrophysiology Core.  To enhance cardiovascular care in the local community, the CCDS supports a variety of cardiovascular clinical trials for new devices and drugs, especially for the treatment of acute coronary syndrome, heart failure, and cardiomyopathy.    In addition, the CCDS provides continuing medical education for local physicians through our annual ArkLaTex Cardiology Conference and hosts an annual Heart Health Day to provide the local community with free health screenings, physician consultations, and educational activities for adults and children.