The Healthy Heart Trust

Over the last decade, based on accumulating research evidence, there have been multiple voices starting to challenge the inclusion of race and ethnicity in cardiovascular disease management guidelines. There are inconsistencies in the inclusion of race in blood pressure guidelines, in particular, and a real concern that using a poorly defined notion of self-assigned race in treatment decisions without context allows a historic perspective of racial pathology that lacks a robust scientific evidence-base to persist.

Watch this webinar to develop a new perspective on this issue, understand the evidence better and explore meaningful solutions.

The agenda includes:
– Chair: Prof Bernard Cheung, Biotechnology Director of the Innovation and Technology Commission, Hong Kong SAR
– Dr Shahed Ahmed, National Clinical Director for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, NHS England, “Race inequality in cardiovascular disease prevention and mortality”
– Dr Sophie Eastwood, Senior Research Fellow, MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL, “High blood pressure treatment and control; how it varies by ethnic group in the UK”
– Ms Natalie Creary, Founder of Liberating Knowledge, “Embedding co-creation for health equity: Health & Racial Justice Labs in London”
Followed by a Q&A with the live audience
This session was overseen and coordinated by Dr Antonis Kousoulis, with Sumaty Hernandez-Farina.

This online seminar was part of World Healthy Life Week 2023, with the theme: “Health Inequalities: Towards Cardiovascular Health Equity”. In partnership with the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine.

The World Healthy Life Week is an international event, now in its fourth year. It is hosted by the Healthy Heart Trust, the healthy heart charity established in 1996. It is about taking a holistic view of our health to promote a healthy life for all by focusing on the message of how keeping our heart healthy is central to our overall good health.

A series of webinars is at the heart of the Week’s activities to enable the exchange of knowledge on the evidence of promoting health and preventing illness and inspire people and decision-makers to take positive action to protect heart health.

You can watch the webinar here: