Dear HIFA colleagues,
This new paper in The Lancet proposes a 'global informational campaign'.
Citation, summary, extract and comment from me below.
CITATION: Prioritising the primary prevention of heart failure
Khan, Sadiya S et al. The Lancet, 2025
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01393-5/fulltext
SUMMARY
Heart failure remains one of the 21st century's greatest unmet clinical and public health challenges. Heart failure is a highly prevalent chronic condition that affects approximately 55 million people worldwide. Although heart failure can be prevented, the global burden of this condition continues to grow, fuelled by an ageing population, improved survival after myocardial infarction, and increasing prevalence of metabolic and kidney disease... This Lancet Series serves as a call to action for clinicians, health systems, and governments to prioritise the primary prevention of heart failure... Successfully reducing the burden of heart failure will require concerted efforts to define clinical workflows across the life course, scalable implementation strategies, and increased public awareness of this pressing crisis.
EXTRACT
Increased public awareness of heart failure
Despite the increasing prevalence of heart failure, the burden and seriousness of this condition remain under-recognised by the public... Therefore, a global informational campaign should be created in collaboration with key stakeholders, including the lay public, health systems, primary care providers, and specialists. Heightened public awareness will provide a platform for advocacy to create national and global research programmes and health-care policies dedicated to the prevention of heart failure. The new initiative can build upon successful coordinated public health campaigns that have accelerated recognition for diagnosis of stroke (FAST acronym for face, arms, speech, and time). In parallel, strategies to promote greater awareness of heart failure symptoms among health-care professionals are needed, such as the FIND-HF acronym (fatigue, increased water accumulation, natriuretic peptide testing, dyspnoea).
COMMENT (NPW): The most important aspect of a 'global informational campaign' is that every person, every health worker, and every policymaker should be empowered with the information they need to prevent, diagnose and manage heart failure. The only way to do this sustainably is to strengthen the global evidence ecosystem, which means understanding better the drivers and barriers i each of the six components of the system (particularly as these relate to heart failure). This approach has never been tried. HIFA stands ready to support. https://www.hifa.org/about-hifa
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org