AHA targets funding needs, heart disease in women

WASHINGTON — Current funding for heart disease and stroke research is currently about $8 per person in the United States, according to the American Heart Association, an amount the organization claims is inadequate for dealing with the expected increase in heart disease and stroke.

“With the aging of the baby boom generation, we are facing a cardiovascular time bomb with staggering implications for health care costs and quality of care,” said Sue Nelson, vice president for federal advocacy at the American Heart Association.

At a recent media briefing here, Nelson and others outlined a legislative agenda for the coming year. The AHA will hold a lobby day on May 15 and 16, where it hopes several hundred volunteers will help spread the message to Congress about the need for funding and greater awareness of heart disease.

More research dollars needed

The AHA’s top three goals are to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health, increase funding for the CDC’s Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program, and increase the awareness of heart disease in women.

Although the AHA does not yet have a specific funding goal, Nelson said it should at least keep pace with the rate of biomedical inflation. That rate is currently about 3.2%, but because of recent government spending cuts, a 9% increase would be required to reach current levels.

Robert Carson, chairman of AHA’s board, said that after a doubling of funding from 1999 to 2003 for the National Institutes of Health, important programs were “slashed” last year by 83%.

“The AHA is the leading nongovernmental funding source for research, but we can’t do it alone. We rely heavily on federal funding and the adoption of ‘heart healthy’ legislation,” Carson said.

Carson said cardiovascular diseases would cost Americans an estimated $403 billion in lost productivity and medical expenses in 2006, which he reminded the audience was roughly the size of the projected federal deficit.

The aging of the population is projected to drive up costs for cardiovascular diseases 54% by 2025. “We want to reduce cardiovascular disease and stroke and related risk by 25% by the year 2010; it’s a very ambitious goal, but it’s one we believe we can accomplish,” Carson said.

The AHA has set a goal of reducing heart disease and stroke 25% by 2010. A dollar investment in research, he said, drives technological changes that will provide a “sevenfold benefit.”

More should be done to increase awareness of heart disease in women, according to speakers at the press conference.

Alice Jacobs, MD, immediate past president of the AHA and director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at Boston Medical Center, said women are often unaware that they are at risk. “The life cycle of a woman goes something like this: When we’re young we take care of our children. When we’re middle-aged we take care of our parents, and when we’re old we take care of our husbands. Thus we often put off our own health,” she said.

According to statistics provided by the AHA, cardiovascular disease kills more women than the next five causes of death combined and kills 12 times as many American women as breast cancer. Even though 40% of women consider themselves well informed about heart disease, only 13% consider heart disease their greatest risk.

The numbers are not much better among practitioners, Jacobs said. Although heart disease kills more women than men each year, many doctors are not aware of that statistic.

Roger Blumenthal, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, said much of the disparity in knowledge may be due to the different ways men and women present with disease.

“Men have more heart attacks than women initially,” Blumenthal said. “When a woman presents with heart disease, it’s typically with angina or heart failure until much later in life when their heart attacks are associated with increased diabetes.”

The AHA plans to introduce legislation in Congress that they hope will increase awareness of women and heart disease through education, prevention and evaluation.

Obesity epidemic

Carson said the American Heart Association hopes its efforts will lead to increased awareness in all populations, particularly of the risk associated with obesity. In 2003, an estimated 136.5 million Americans were overweight, including 64 million who were obese.

Among children aged 6 to 19, 9.2 million are considered overweight or obese. Overweight adolescents have a 70% chance of becoming overweight adults.

According to the Surgeon General, 43% of adolescents watch more than two hours of television each day.

“Physical activity, especially walking, would go a long way toward reducing the risk that comes with obesity,” Blumenthal said, adding that the current literature shows about 10,000 steps per day – about 4.5 miles – significantly decreases risk of heart disease.

Blumenthal recommended that those interested in preventing heart disease work with state governments and local businesses to distribute pedometers to measure the number of steps taken each day. – by Jeremy Moore