The American Heart Association sets a new Impact Goal for 2030. This goal includes longer life expectancy, whole-body health and wellbeing, and equitable achievement of cardiovascular health.
Cardiovascular disease remains a significant problem worldwide. Since the 1990s, the American Heart Association (AHA) has released an Impact Goal at the beginning of each decade. The purpose of the Impact Goal is to provide strategic direction for research and funding that will ultimately help people live longer and healthier lives.
One of the AHA’s goals for this decade is to increase life expectancy from 66 to 68 years of age in the United States by 2030. Another goal is to increase life expectancy from 64 to 67 years of age worldwide by 2030. To help achieve this, a close look at health risk factors will need to be analyzed.
Another part of this decade’s Impact Goal is to focus on whole-body health and wellness to attain better cardiovascular health. In the past, the AHA has strictly focused on cardiovascular and brain health. In contrast, the AHA plans on extensive research to help improve whole-body health.
This decade’s Impact Goal also focuses on the equitable achievement of cardiovascular health no matter a person’s socio-demographic or socioeconomic status. The AHA will look at equity statistics and progress throughout the decade.
According to one of the authors of the report, Executive Vice President for Health System Affairs at UT Southwestern Medical Center, “every person should enjoy health and well-being no matter their age, gender, race, or even the zip code in which they live. And we know disparities exist even to that level — from one block of a city to another,”
The AHA is confident these goals will be reached in collaboration with non-profit, private, and public sectors, and that includes stakeholders and both local and global partners. Healthy changes to our environments, lifestyles, and diets can make a large impact on health and well-being. The Impact Goal for 2030 will help to make a happier and healthier globe.
Written by Laura Laroche, HBASc, Medical Writer
References:
“The American Heart Association 2030 Impact Goal”. Circulation. 2020. 1-14. Online.
Long life, good health. 2020, https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/usmc-llg012920.php, assessed January 30th, 2020.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
