Article Impact Level: HIGH Data Quality: STRONG Summary of Circulation, 146(5), e18–e43. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001078 Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones et al
Points
- The construct of cardiovascular health (CVH) helps provide the way for the positive, actionable step which can be taken for measuring, monitoring, and modifying CVH through primitive, primary, and secondary presentational approaches.
- The historical research over the past 12 years provides an insight to understand the limitations and need for further enhancement in the CVH construct with the aim of improvement of healthier outcomes and quality of life in diversified settings and throughout the life span.
- The new ways of defining CVH and measuring it through life’s Essential 8 at an individual level and for the population represent an important step for promoting healthy metrics and preventing uncomplimentary trajectories.
- Business management says if you can’t measure something, you can’t make improvements. So this new measurement tool brings new opportunities for catalyzing CVH improvements by developing awareness regarding its importance, promoting new measurement platforms, making new interventions by funding new research, and publishing new strategies.
Summary
The American Heart Association (AHA) worked on cardiovascular health, and in 2010 they defined a new construct about cardiovascular health in which they promote shifting the focus from disease treatment to healthy activities and preservations through the life span at individual and population levels. A wide range of successive evidence provided deep knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of old ways of defining and measuring cardiovascular health. In its response, a group of writers was arranged by the American Heart Association to write the recommendation about updates and enhancements and analyzed the definition and measurement of each metric (Life’s Simple 7) for the responses to intra-individual and inter-individual changes. As a result, the spectrum of age was extended to cover the whole life span, as well as additional new metrics, were included. Social elements of psychological and physical health were considered fundamental aspects in the optimization and preservation of cardiovascular health.
As a result of the new approach: Life’s Essential 8 was introduced, which includes diet (updated), body mass index, physical activity, sleep health (new), nicotine exposure (updated), blood glucose (updated), blood lipids (updated), and blood pressure. Each metric scored from 0-100, and the cardiovascular health score was calculated through an unweighted average score of all 8 components, ranging from 0-100. All the ways to implement cardiovascular health evaluation and its longitudinal monitoring were discussed as these are the potential sources and tools for the generation of data in the promotion of adaptation in policy, institution, clinical, public health, and community setting.
Link to the article: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001078
References Lloyd-Jones, D. M., Allen, N. B., Anderson, C. A. M., Black, T., Brewer, L. C., Foraker, R. E., Grandner, M. A., Lavretsky, H., Perak, A. M., Sharma, G., Rosamond, W., & null, null. (2022). Life’s essential 8: Updating and enhancing the american heart association’s construct of cardiovascular health: a presidential advisory from the american heart association. Circulation, 146(5), e18–e43. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001078
