This post was authored by Nathan Wong, PhD, FACC, and Michael Blaha, MD, MPH, editor-in-chief and associate editor of the Cardiometabolic Disease CardioSource Clinical Community.

With the upsurge in prevalence of obesity and diabetes in the U.S. and beyond, and the fact that some three fourths of deaths in persons with diabetes and due to cardiovascular disease, the ACC and other groups have recognized the importance of understanding and communicating the importance of cardiometabolic issues in preventive cardiology. The convergence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease has been the basis for many such educational activities.

A new ACC community on cardiometabolic health will help to further educate clinicians on important connections between diabetes and other cardiometabolic conditions such as hypertension and dyslipidemia and cardiovascular disease. The community will highlight new strategies aimed to screen for these problems, detect those at highest risk to prioritize treatment, and newer and emerging therapies that have the potential for significant future benefit.

The community will also feature a collection of video interviews, interactive case studies, hot topics, articles of the month, and questions for viewers. Some of the topics that will be covered include the role of both newer and emerging lipid and anti-diabetic therapies and their potential cardiovascular effects, imaging strategies and their value in risk stratification, and concepts in hypertension control related to cardiometabolic risk.

We hope clinicians will utilize our educational offerings to gain greater insight into how to better help patients to prevent initial or recurrent events by ensuring better adherence to lifestyle management and recommended evidence-based therapies. With six of the top ten causes of death globally caused by cardiometabolic risk factors (elevated blood pressure, glucose, overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, smoking and dyslipidemia) we need to do a better job in addressing these issues in order to have a chance at meeting the global target of reducing premature non-communicable disease mortality 25 percent by 2025. We hope our site will help provide and empower clinicians with the information and tools they need to help reach these targets.

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