New think piece explores how addressing CVD will have benefits beyond health

14 September 2022

The Health Policy Partnership (HPP) is pleased to publish a new think piece: The heart of society: why addressing cardiovascular disease is critical to achieving wider societal goals. The think piece explores how tackling cardiovascular disease provides an opportunity for real progress to be made towards addressing broader challenges in society.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause of preventable illness, disability and death, making it one of several urgent priorities facing governments. Rather than viewing it as being in competition with other political priorities – such as securing long-term economic growth in the context of ageing societies, ensuring recovery from COVID-19 and reducing health inequalities – we can strive to see how they are all interlinked.

Based on our research and expert interviews, HPP calls on governments to:

Develop health-driven economic strategies that take into account the impact of non-communicable diseases (including CVD) on societal and economic participation
Prioritise CVD within national post-COVID-19 health system resilience strategies
Acknowledge and mitigate the links between CVD and health and social inequalities.

We hope this think piece facilitates discussion in CVD while promoting the formation of new alliances across the health sector and beyond, to unite in this critical societal endeavour.

Download the think piece

This is the second think piece from the Thought Leadership Forum on Cardiovascular Disease. Read the first think piece and find out more about HPP’s work in this area on our project page.

New think piece explores how addressing CVD will have benefits beyond health

Recent news