Updated guide to help policy makers, providers fight cardiovascular disease (USA)

The American Heart Association has released new recommendations for policy makers and public health providers to combat heart disease and stroke on a local level. The "American Heart Association Guide for Improving Cardiovascular Health at the Community Level, 2013 Update" - evidence-based goals, strategies and recommendations for community-based public health interventions - is published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. "The future burden of cardiovascular disease, unless we can prevent it, is projected to have an enormous economic impact. Public health goals should focus on developing interventions that help make an individual's default decisions healthy," said Thomas A. Pearson, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., the co-lead author of the study. Maintaining optimal cardiovascular health can "avert the continuing progression of cardiovascular disease risk in each generation, which continues to demand remedial strategies that are too costly, too limited and often too late," said Pearson, who is senior associate dean for clinical research and director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, N.Y.