The good news is that the data recently released from the National Center for Health Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that death rates from heart disease and stroke in the USA have dropped significantly and surpassed the prevention goals for the American Heart Association for 2010.
Heart disease deaths were reduced by 25.8% between 1999 and 2005 and by 24.4% for stroke deaths. For women, heart disease deaths decreased by 26.9% between 1999 and 2005 and for stroke it fell by 23.7%.
This news can largely be credited to the vast amount of research that has been done over the past 20 years and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This lifesaving research has significantly improved methods of preventing, diagnosing and treating patients with cardiovascular disease.
The bad news is that continued progress with cardiovascular research and other health research is at great risk. The funding of the NIH by Congress is considered "discretionary" spending and, due to other priorities, the dollars used to support the NIH have not increased in the past 5 years. Since NIH funding has not even kept up with inflation, research activities supported by our government have actually decreased in recent years.
This decrement in support has had a dramatically negative impact on all types of biomedical research and puts at risk the many gains that have been made in recent decades, including those seen in the prevention and treatment of heart disease. New grants, containing new ideas, are having trouble getting funded because so much of the limited monies that do exist are already committed to grants previously approved. A deficit of adequate research dollars is directly and negatively impacting our ability to maintain progress in the fight against the greatest killers of population, namely cardiovascular disease, cancer and other common illnesses.
Here's the reality check: heart disease and stroke are still the #1 and #3 killers, over the next 5 causes of death in the USA. Since the 1980's, more women than men have died of heart disease and this trend is continuing. The full impact of heart disease on our nation and our families has not even been felt yet. Over 8 million women are living today with active heart disease and the prediction is that 10 years from now, as the baby boomer generation ages, we will have at least 12-15 million women living with heart disease.
Further, the current national epidemic of obesity and diabetes, which has been progressively worsening over the past 20 years, will make these cardiovascular death rates even worse in the future if improved interventions are not developed. Coupling this fact with the enormous differences in racial and geographic access to care, insurance coverage, and the lack of awareness and education about heart disease and stroke, means that we have not yet seen the end to this fight.
All of us need to be aware of the importance of research in making strides in the prevention and treatment of disease. We need to insist that candidates running for office understand these issues and commit to improving the situation for our sakes and the sake of the next generations. With the current biomedical funding crisis, we are already beginning to lose a whole new generation of biomedical researchers who could make the difference in our lives and the lives of our children.
The number of lives lost to cardiovascular disease each year is many orders of magnitude greater than those lost to terrorism or war. Let's not lose the momentum that we had gained and that has made a major difference in all of our lives. I hope it is not too late - we need to increase NIH funding immediately and maintain an acceptable annual rate of increase to ensure continued progress in the war against our major killers.