Top Things to Know: Recommendations for Cardiovascular Health and Disease Surveillance for 2030 and Beyond
Published: January 29, 2020
- Ground is being lost in the fight against cardiovascular disease (CVD). In 2011, the rate of CVD mortality decline began decelerating, and the downward trends in deaths attributable to heart disease (HD) reversed course in middle-aged Americans.
- The current status of CVD surveillance does not adequately explain where gaps exist across the continuum of care and prevention. Surveillance is a tool that captures HD and stroke data, accommodating analysis and ultimately enhancements to the public health system’s abilities to improve outcomes.
- The aim of this policy statement is to review and comment on existing recommendations for and current approaches to cardiovascular surveillance, identify gaps, and formulate policy implications and pragmatic recommendations for transforming surveillance of CVD disease and cardiovascular health (CVH) in the United States.
- Novel modeling methods can predict the burden of CVD, inform effective interventions, and guide resource allocation if valid, reliable data are available at state and local levels. Ultimately, risk prediction derived from these models must translate to action to improve CVH.
- Current surveillance must be modernized to incorporate new dimensions and domains and must be capable of evolving as new risk factors and novel technologies emerge.
- The development of community platforms, coupled with widespread use of digital technologies, electronic health records, and mobile health, has created new opportunities that could greatly modernize surveillance if coordinated in a pragmatic manner.
- A national initiative proposed by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists offers a vision of public health surveillance that could potentially be of immense value to policy development in CVH promotion and CVD prevention, if its scope, when implemented, includes CVD, other noncommunicable diseases, and their determinants.
- New policy initiatives to support cardiovascular surveillance will require sensitivity to ethical issues around data privacy, consent, and the common good.
- This statement is being published along with the release of The AHA 2030 Impact Goal: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association, which underscores the importance of CVH and CVD surveillance systems for acquiring information sufficient to support implementation and evaluation.
- Better CVD surveillance is needed to combat the challenges we face in access to quality CVD care. The paper outlines the actions and components necessary to create the CVH and CVD surveillance system of the future, steps in development, and challenges that federal, state, and local governments will need to address.
Citation
Roger VL, Sidney S, Fairchild AL, Howard VJ, Labarthe DR, Shay CM, Tiner AC, Whitsel LP, Rosamond WD, on behalf of the American Heart Association Advocacy Coordinating Committee. Recommendations for cardiovascular health and disease surveillance for 2030 and beyond: a policy statement from the American Heart Association [published online ahead of print January 29, 2020]. Circulation. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0000000000000756.