A new vision to tackle biggest killer
Dr Mike
Knapton investigates how we can tackle cardiovascular diseases
- the major public health challenge of the next
decade.
Tuesday 10 July 2012
Three years ago, a unique group of more than 40
voluntary organisations, including the British Heart Foundation,
published a very important piece of work. The Cardio and Vascular
Coalition’s (CVC’s)
Destination 2020 report urged the Department of Health to
commit to a proactive and coordinated plan to
tackle cardiovascular diseases.
It was, in effect, the voluntary sector’s
vision for change; a way forward to prevent heart
attacks and strokes, and provide better care for patients. And,
crucially, it recognised the links between heart disease, stroke, diabetes and
kidney disease.
This report will help those writing the Outcomes Strategy realise the voluntary sector’s new vision
Cardiovascular diseases
are conditions
affecting the heart and blood
vessels throughout the body. They include
heart attacks, arrhythmias, stroke, transient
ischaemic attack, peripheral vascular disease and
congenital heart disease. But it’s also important to include
conditions which impact on, or result from, cardiovascular disease,
like diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
It’s important to remember the conditions I’ve
mentioned above don’t work in isolation - having one organ affected
by cardiovascular disease greatly increases the risk of it
affecting another. That’s why recognising their
commonality is an important step towards reducing the
significant burden they place on society.
On December 1, 2011, the Health Secretary
Andrew Lansley recognised that we needed a new
Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy. Rising levels of
obesity and diabetes and an aging population meant we needed a new
vision, a new plan to not only sustain but improve progress
combating the UK’s biggest killer.
So the CVC has come together again, this time
to help parliamentarians and peers write
a new report that will help shape the Department of Health’s
new Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy.
Download the report
Tweet the report
Just like in 2009, cardiovascular diseases are
the major public health challenge of the
next decade. This report will help those writing the Outcomes
Strategy realise the voluntary sector’s new vision for tackling
cardiovascular diseases.