Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. CVD is preventable through lifestyle changes such as increasing physical activity, eating a healthy diet, not smoking, and managing conditions like high blood pressure and cholesterol. If everyone engaged in recommended prevention activities, heart attacks could be reduced by 63% and strokes by 31% over 30 years. However, many people do not currently engage in optimal prevention. Efforts to promote prevention programs and educate the public on risk factors and lifestyle changes could help reduce CVD deaths in the United States.

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Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer throughout the world. Specifically,
coronary artery disease is the addition of plaque in the arteries. This is a totally preventable
disease. In order to reduce the number of deaths in the United States people need to
understand the risk of their actions, lifestyle changes, and measures to reduce the damage
already done.
Heart disease is a term used in reference to multiple different problems related to
plaque buildup in the arteries of the heart making them less effective. Cardiovascular related
diseases are the number one killer throughout the world. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is seen
more in people the older they get, men are at greater risk than pre-menopausal women, and
family history of heart disease or stoke increases ones risk (Mendis, 2011). Heart disease does
not discriminate against anyone, anyone can be at risk. Some choices individuals can make to
lead a healthy life avoiding CVD by increasing physical inactivity, maintain a healthy diet, limited
to no tobacco use, with predispositions to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes,
overweight, and obesity (Mendis, 2011).
Male, female, old, or young are all to risk of CVD. This is worldwide issue but we will
focus on the United States. In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) published 136,000
people died to cardiovascular diseases alone. For the US this has caused a real financial burden.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA), from 2010 and 2030 the total medical cost
of CVD will triple to approximately $200 billion dollars (Roger, 2012). This increase in cost is a
result of the aging population with loss productivity from those who loss there job or became
too sick to work. The AHA study quotes,

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Estimates using the Archimedes Model found that if everyone received the eleven
recommended prevention activities, myocardial infarctions and strokes would be
reduced by 63% and 31%, respectively, in the next 30 years. At more feasible levels of
performance, myocardial infarctions and strokes would be reduced by 36% and 20%.
Unfortunately, the current use of these prevention activities is suboptimal (Kahn, 2008).
There is hope for those who struggle with CVD. Prevention programs are the best answer this
county has right now to hopeful get a head and change our future.
High blood pressure is the biggest risk factor for stroke and it can be fully treated. High
cholesterol, along with hypertension, can be treated with strict management of physical
activity, diet, and medication. They all intertwine so well it is hard to do one without the other.
These are all personal choices that are not left to circumstance.
Knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and values that exist before a behavior that effects one’s
health is a predisposing factor (Hodges, 2005). These factors are also things in one’s life that
they cannot change. In regard to CVD, age, gender, ethnicity, family history, and cultural diet
habits are predisposing factors. Personal lifestyle choices and there consequences on our body
such as smoking, over eating, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. These behaviors are all rely on the
accessibility, cost, and availability (Hodges, 2005). Enabling factors are personal choices that
individuals can change. Reinforcing factors allow us to continue our negative behaviors.
Reinforcing factors are how we justify our actions or push the blame on to others. ‘McDonalds
made me fat’ or ‘I am so stressed, I need a cigarette,’ these are reinforcing examples. Ease of

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access to a bad diet and stress are the top reasons most people say to justify their negative
behaviors.
Reducing CVD is extremely expensive. There are 11 recommended ways/activities to
prevent CVD related deaths. If every person in America could afford the cost for all the
preventative activities that they qualified for, than in over 30 years the number of heart attacks
per year would reduce more than 60%, strokes per year would be down 30%, and the general
life expectancy would increase by an average of 1.3 years with a greater quality of life than
currently experienced (Kahn, 2008). According to research all 11 areas of risk show
improvement but individuals must consider varying results for themselves because of the
various combinations of risk one might have. The effectiveness of this studies interventions
over a span of 30 years assuming 100% of people did as instructed 100% of the time, you could
spend up to 1.8 dollars on medical expenses for all 11 factors to reduce (Kahn, 2008). Overall all
this study states about 75% of adults in the U.S. would benefit from at least one recommended
prevention activity, also this will prevent 66% of heart attacks, 33% of strokes, but for these
benefits this prevention activities will greatly increase our health care rates (Kahn, 2008).
In the United Kingdom, a recent study recommends a new risk calculator that provides a
ten year risk score, your ‘Heart Age’, and ‘CVD event-free survival’. ‘The Heart Age’ is an
evidence based concept to express and estimate risks. It is similar to the ten year risk score but
it relates it to a person’s chronological age. So 30 year old smoker could have the heart of a 50
year old while a 45 year old athlete could have a ‘heart age’ of 25. The ‘CVD event-free survival’
score shows how long a person can expect to live without a heart attack or stroke, assuming

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they do not die of anything else in the meantime. The results showed that using the ‘Heart Age’
to raise awareness promoted behavior changes and reduced the risk of the group and
decreased there ‘Heart Age’ (Haw, 2014).
Currently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, along with a number of
nonprofits and private organizations, launched a program called Million Hearts. Their goal is to
prevent a total of one million heart attacks and strokes during a five year span. Million Hearts
focuses on four main points, the ABCS. ABCS stands for aspirin, blood pressure, cholesterol, and
smoking. Statistics show there is no significant change in the use of aspirin in addition to other
medications but there was a great increase of blood pressure control and cholesterol
management. Quitting smoking will help your vascular system not to constrict nor harden.
“Million Hearts has focused on improving performance in specific clinical and community-level
CVD risk factors because interventions in these areas have been shown to be effective ways to
greatly decrease CVD morbidity and mortality” (Ritchey, 2014). The data shows that younger
adults were less likely to receive the proper smoking cessation opportunities and had a higher
sodium daily intake which put that at greater risk to develop a CVD related illness. The better
your health is by the age of 50 years old reduces your risk ten times from developing
atherosclerotic CVD (Ritchey, 2014).
When confronting obesity and overweight risk factors intense behavioral counseling is
very effective. Although the changes may be small, they are critical to their success. For best
results, counseling sessions need to continue for about one to two years. As a result of these
behavior changes, cholesterol level decrease, the patient loses weight, and reduces their risk of

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CVD related illness. Increase in moderate-intensity exercise for a total of two and a half hours
spread throughout a week, improvement in cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels
can decrease ones overall risk of CVD (LeFevre, 2014). There is a lot of studies done to consider
the Mediterranean diet a superior form of weight and health management. The diet has proven
to reduce high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, and blood glucose levels (Robson, 2014).
In summary, CVD is a big health risk in developed countries. There has been lots of
research and studies done to measure the most effective ways to reduce one risk and in return
lengthen one’s life. We know that CVD is directly related to an individual’s weight, cholesterol,
diabetic status, nutrition intake, tobacco use, and medication. CVD is a preventable disease. If
we start teaching the next generations when they are young then they will not have to endure
the harsh financial cost of CVD. The annual cost of someone who had not taken care of their
body is astronomical. In retaliation to this pandemic we can educate ourselves to the ways we
can reduce the damage we have done so far. There are many nonprofit and government agency
out there willing and ready to help the willing. Personal motivation to stay on the right track
can be hard so have a group or a partner to change their lifestyle with you or hold you
accountable for the changes you want to make in your life. There is always time to change your
old habits and technology has made it easier than ever to access the information and provide
answers to individuals in every situation. Today we have app that provide age appropriate
exercise routines, stretches, recipes, and tips on how as well as what to order at restaurants.
The sheer number of tobacco cessation programs and the strong initiative push by the medical
community has provided many options for people to quit. Weight loss is the hardest factor to
deal with because there is not healthy weight chart that everyone fits in, so I focus on healthy

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input. The nutrition of what is going in our bodies is important. A side effect of proper nutrition
is weight loss because you are no longer eating everything in sight because you have found the
right mixture your body was calling for. With these changes the United States can get a handle
on its CVD related deaths.
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