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National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Chronic Disease Prevention
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National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Chronic Disease Prevention Home | Contact Us |
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CENTERS FOR
DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION Our Goal for the 21st Century: Radically Reduce the Burden of Heart Disease and Stroke In the next century, an important growth of the older population. challenge for public health will be to Thus, they have failed to reduce radically reduce the number of deaths from heart disease and stroke. These diseases are the most pressing health burden of our time. Over the past 100 years, the story of heart disease in the United States has been a sad saga with the appearance of a full-blown and persistent epidemic, as the figure illustrates. We have watched as the number of people dying of heart disease has risen every year, up until the 1960s. Since that time, the number of deaths has remained at or above 700,000 per year.* There has been some good news: age-standardized rates of heart disease deaths have declined sharply over the past 30 years. But those gains, important as they are in signaling the potential for prevention, have been offset, especially by growth of the older population. Thus, they have failed to reduce the burden of heart disease from the level reached back in the 1960s. Death from Diseases of the Heart, United States, 1900–2001
Source: American Heart Association. Heart disease and stroke statistics—2004 update. Dallas, Tex: American Heart Association, 2003:5. The story of stroke in America bears an important similarity: although rates of stroke deaths have declined over the past 100 years, the number of people who die of stroke each year is no lower today than it was in 1980. As discouraging as these numbers are, they have not dampened the public health community’s determination to rise to the challenge. Our prevention efforts today will ensure that 100 years from now, the story of heart disease and stroke will be quite different in this country. Not Just a U.S. Problem Heart disease and stroke also have global importance, ranking as leading causes of death worldwide in 1990 (World Health Organization). Future projections show that they are expected to remain the world’s leading causes of death over the next 20 years, with the numbers of deaths increasing greatly. Calls for action to prevent these conditions are becoming widespread around the globe. When we look at the projected age composition of the developing world, it becomes clear that we have a brief window of opportunity—only two decades— in which to avert the full brunt of this epidemic in the critical 35- to 64-year age range of the labor force. Our own forecasts for rising U.S. health care costs attributable to chronic diseases allow no laxity in tackling the challenge of heart disease and stroke prevention to the fullest of our abilities. This issue of Chronic Disease Notes & Reports is devoted to cardiovascular health, with articles about recent developments and works in progress. A Public Health Action Plan to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke, released at the first Steps to a HealthierUS Summit in April 2003, provides a framework for such activities. In this issue of the newsletter, you will find many examples that address the action plan’s recommendations regarding effective communications and leadership, partnerships, organization, taking action, strengthening capacity, advancing knowledge, and engaging in regional and global partnerships. We cannot presume that these exemplary activities alone will do the job, but our nation’s prospects for preventing heart disease and stroke are improving and gaining momentum. Our recent successes in bringing the key players together and adopting a long-range strategy will take us a good distance toward eliminating health disparities and increasing the quality and years of healthy life that Americans want to enjoy. We will meet the challenge by preventing cardiovascular disease risk factors from ever developing, detecting and targeting existing risk factors, identifying and treating heart attacks and strokes as early as possible, and reducing people’s risk for recurrent heart attacks and strokes. In the process, we will learn much about how to strengthen the effectiveness of strategies to prevent other major chronic diseases, which have much in common with heart disease and stroke as public health challenges. |
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Privacy
Policy | Accessibility This page last reviewed August 30, 2004 United
States Department of Health and Human Services |
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