Improving Heart Health and Reducing Health Disparities at MedStar Health

This week, we have passed a sad milestone of 900,000 lives lost to COVID-19.  This deadly pandemic continues to kill approximately 3,000 people per day in the United States (equal to a 9/11 casualty event every day!).  It’s a staggering number.

While we continue to work to understand and fight the devastating COVID-19 virus, including more than 200 active research studies happening across the MedStar Health system, an even larger killer remains at large. Heart disease.  Despite all our medical advances, heart disease remains the top cause of death in the U.S, accounting for about 1 in every 4 deaths according to the latest data from the American Heart Association.  And while heart disease can impact anyone, regardless of gender or race, statistics show that people of color disproportionately shoulder the burden of the worst outcomes. For example, according to CDC data, Black people are 30% more likely to die from heart disease than white people.  In Washington D.C., the death rate due to heart disease is more than 4x higher in Ward 8 than Ward 3.

The intersecting need to improve heart health and reduce health disparities are far reaching, beyond just the cardiac care unit.  For example, pregnancy related deaths, which are significantly higher among women of color, are most often due to cardiovascular disease (and other cerebro-vascular disorders like hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, cardiomyopathy, thrombotic pulmonary embolism or stroke).

As a cardiologist, it is therefore apropos that February is both American Heart Month and National Black History Month.  As an academic health system, MedStar Health is committed to research that helps us better understand, diagnose, and treat all forms of cardiovascular disease in all segments of our community, especially among groups who have the highest risk or need.  That starts with studies that address health disparities in our community to build health equity.

In this issue of FOCUS, you will learn about how MedStar Health investigators understand that the best way to connect our research to the community is to co-learn and co-develop the research with community members themselves, and thus, allowing for both participants and researchers to experience the greatest benefit. Additionally, you will find below some examples of how we are advancing health through research to fight heart disease and health disparities, including application of advanced analytics and machine learning, and creating knowledge from our own experiences (like the article from interventional cardiology on thrombosis in COVID-19). With the work of our investigators, to our clinicians helping patients manage their heart health, to our associates wearing red in support of the fight against heart disease. MedStar Health is tackling the #1 killer every day.

I hope you will join us in support of living a heart-healthy life, raising awareness about heart disease, and advocating for additional research in preventing, detecting, and treating cardiovascular conditions.

Stay well. Stay safe.  Live a heart healthy life!
 
Neil

You may view FOCUS articles online at MedStarHealth.org/blog.