Heart Age Awareness - World Heart Federation and Unilever's joint promotion
Last updated 24/06/2009 09:52:20
Heart Age Awareness - World Heart Federation and Unilever joint promotion
World Heart Federation and Unilever will jointly promote awareness of Heart Age, a new concept to help the global effort to reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD), the leading cause of premature death worldwide.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), deaths from CVD will increase from 17.2 million per year in 2005 to 24 million per year in 2030 – the equivalent of losing more than the entire population of Australia every year.
Heart Age, based on the Framingham Risk Score, uses standard risk factors for heart disease or stroke (such as age, weight, gender, cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking) to estimate your ‘Heart Age', which could be higher than your chronological age if your personal CVD risk factors are high.
Professor Pekka Puska, president at World Heart Federation said: "If Heart Age can engage individuals and motivate them to change their diet and lifestyle for the better, no matter what their level of risk, then this could be a breakthrough in the global effort towards improved CVD prevention, which could save hundreds of thousands of lives and sparing many more the misery of heart disease and stroke."
Unilever unveiled a new report entitled ‘What If People's Hearts Stayed Young?', which published, for the first time, the theoretical effect on the numbers of heart attacks and strokes (CVD events) over the next decade that might be achieved if people estimated to have an elevated Heart Age were able to reduce it by three years. The modelling used data from the UK and USA as examples.
The test has given Unilever the confidence to focus its heart health consumer awareness and education efforts on a specific goal: to motivate 100 million people worldwide to take the Heart Age test and to encourage diet and lifestyle changes that will lower elevated Heart Ages in this group by three years, on average, by 2020.
Over 2 million people have taken the Heart Age test to date. The results showed people estimated to have elevated Heart Ages lowered them by three years, predicted CVD events could be reduced over ten years by an estimated 216 000 in the UK, and by an estimated 1 million in the USA.
The modelling further calculates that, if everyone – not just those with elevated Heart Ages - managed to keep their Heart Age as young as their chronological age, the predicted number of CVD events over ten years could be reduced by an estimated 986 000 in the UK and by an estimated 5 million in the USA.
Unilever has built on the concept of Heart Age and developed an accurate and simple online tool to enable people to find out their own Heart Age and for health professionals to better engage their patients in their own heart health. After piloting the Heart Age Tool in 18 countries, Unilever has developed it further, adding a tailored heart health plan to guide and motivate people to make lifelong changes to their diet and lifestyle that can help reduce their personal cardiovascular disease risk factors.
Find the Heart Age Tool here www.heartagecalculator.com
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