“These are the times that try men’s souls.*” A multitude of unprecedented problems now face the American Society of Hypertension (ASH) and our sister societies, practicing clinicians and academic physicians and scientists, and those who develop new treatments and perfect older ones. These economic times require cooperation and collaboration among academia, government, and industry so that hypertensive patients get the best care possible. ASH must prepare to meet the difficulties and challenges ahead. In this regard, we have made significant progress toward revitalizing and re-inventing the society and restoring its luster. We are focusing our efforts on our mission, to be the voice of hypertension, in two ways. First, we must provide the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and unbiased slice of what is new and important in our discipline to our members and those clinicians and scientists whose primary professional interest is hypertension and related disorders. Second, we must help our communities to care for patients with hypertension. To that end, we are continuing our highly successful outreach program begun last year in New Orleans. Our plans to help the city of San Francisco will provide assistance in improving the care of its citizens with hypertension. Our 24th Annual Scientific Meeting promises to be an outstanding event. Our faculty includes national and international leaders in hypertension and related disorders and is focusing on our primary constituents, those whose major clinical and/or investigative interest is hypertension. Our program is balanced with 30% of our abstracts classified as pathobiology, 35% as translational, and 35% as therapy. We will have nearly 40 abstracts presented orally, evenly divided among all 3 categories. All of these abstracts were highly rated by our program committee and the many others who evaluated the quality of the submissions. By tripling the number of oral presentations at our meeting, more of our colleagues will get the opportunity to show their work to a wide audience, and it will be clear to more of our attendees that high-quality science is presented at ASH. We have also recognized that because more than 70 million Americans and more than 1 billon people worldwide have hypertension, those of us who treat hypertensive patients will need to be better versed in how to deal with some of the other problems that these patients commonly have: osteoporosis, headaches, perimenopausal symptoms, and sexual dysfunction, to name just a few. Consequently, our meeting will feature experts in these areas who will tell us What the Hypertension Specialist Should Know about these problems. After each talk, the speaker will be available for a ticketed and limited workshop where the points discussed can be further elucidated. We have taken advantage of our San Francisco location to involve the leadership of our colleagues in Asia by sponsoring 2 joint scientific sessions with delegations from China and another with representatives of hypertension societies from Japan and the Philippines. We all share the same problems and will now be able to share our knowledge. On behalf of the program committee for the 24th Annual ASH meeting, I encourage you to attend what promises to be an engaging and memorable exchange of ideas. We look forward to your participation and feedback and happily anticipate our meeting next year from May 1–4 in New York as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Society.