Health Mary Mata September 20, 2011

Working To Prevent 1 Million Heart Disease Deaths

The “Million Hearts” initiative aims to prevent 1 million deaths from cardiovascular disease over the next five years. In addition to costing Americans $444 billion a year in medical costs and lost productivity, more than 2 million Americans have a heart attack or stroke, and more than 800,000 of them die each year from cardiovascular disease, making it the leading cause of death in the United States.

In response to this epidemic, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced a new initiative called Million Hearts, which aims to prevent 1 million cases of heart attack and stroke over the next five years.

Million Hearts has two goals:

1.) Empowering Americans to make healthy choices such as preventing tobacco use and reducing sodium and trans fat consumption. Achieving this goal can reduce the number of people who need medical treatment such as blood pressure or cholesterol medication to prevent heart attack or stroke.

2.) Improving care for people who need treatment by encouraging a targeted focus on the ABCS, the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease:

  • Aspirin for people at risk
  • Blood pressure control
  • Cholesterol management
  • Smoking cessation

By empowering Americans to make healthy choices and improving care, Million Hearts strives to achieve the following benchmarks by 2017:

  • Increase the rate of aspirin use for people with ischemic heart disease.
  • Increase the rate of successful blood pressure control for people with hypertension.
  • Increase the rate of effective treatment of high blood cholesterol.
  • Decrease smoking prevalence.
  • Decrease average salt intake.
  • Decrease artificial trans fat consumption by 50%.

HHS has allocated more than $200 million in new and refocused investments to achieve the goal of Million Hearts. For example, the Centers for Disease Control announced $40 million for chronic disease prevention programs to health departments across the country. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will announce the awarding of $85 million in Medicaid incentives to10 states for prevention of chronic diseases, like cardiovascular disease.

However, no matter how much money is thrown at this project it won’t work unless all of us are committed to living healthier lives. And I certainly have my doubts, given that 30% of children’s hospitals in America have a McDonald’s restaurant in them!

References:

[Photo By qthomasbower]

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