A joint editorial on behalf of the ACC, American Heart Association, European Society of Cardiology and World Heart Federation calls for a new era of equity-centered cardiovascular care designed to redefine prevention, optimize care delivery and ensure that all patients worldwide benefit equally from the promise of modern cardiovascular medicine.

The editorial, published in JACC, calls for a new science-based approach to addressing the "persistent burden" of health inequities that takes into account new biological paradigms, takes advantage of implementation sciences, and mitigates key barriers like access, bias, culture and digital inequity. It outlines "Seven Imperatives for a New Era of Health Equity Science" that can serve as a "blueprint" for closing gaps in care and ushering in "the next phase of health equity science."

"The challenge ahead is aligning innovation with inclusion, investigation with equity, and discovery with diverse ideation," the editorial states. According to the Societies, "the emerging science of health equity can illuminate novel biology revealing how stress, environment, and adversity translate into disease, and introduce targeted new interventions translating understanding into measurable improvements in outcome. Adopting such an equity-centric approach is of paramount priority and is the sine qua non to eliminating health disparities."

Clinical Topics: Prevention

Keywords: Health Equity, Primary Prevention, Cardiovascular Diseases