Dying from heart disease correlates more closely with your ZIP Code and bank balance than with your gene pool.
When I was growing up in Pakistan, I was told that heart disease was a side effect of high-income countries’ relentless pursuit of material progress. The tables have turned though and heart disease is sky-rocketing in low- and middle-income countries in part because of the globalization of the Western lifestyle.If we are to continue making headway against heart disease in the next century, we will have to ensure that innovations are accessible to all.
One way to do that is to change the incentives in medicine: Health systems get paid for treating heart attacks but not for those they prevent. Another is through better public policy. Not only must clinicians advocate for patients at their bedsides; they need to put pressure on elected officials to expand access to healthcare. A healthy heart should be a right, not a privilege.
Haider Warraich is a cardiologist at the VA Boston Healthcare System, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and author of “
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