National Heart Failure Initiative will improve outcomes and quality of life for patients with HF

By 2030, more than 8 million people in the U.S. are projected to have heart failure, and deaths from HF are the primary cause of the plateau in age-adjusted death rate from CVD overall. In response,  AHA CEO Nancy Brown has announced the AHA’s National Heart Failure Initiative supported by founding sponsor Novartis and national sponsor Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc./Lilly USA, LLC.

The initiative will enhance early identification and optimal treatment of HF, along with patient education, to increase healthy time at home and reduce all-cause mortality by 5%. The extensive expertise and infrastructure of the AHA, scientific partners and industry funders will be leveraged to develop concurrent interventions at several points along the patient care spectrum, including clinical and community touch points, specifically:

• Establish and support learning health care system using quality improvement infrastructure with real-time feedback for identification of key areas for improvement and evaluation of evidence-based approaches.

• Develop, implement and evaluate scalable patient empowerment and engagement tools that include personalized technology solutions and facilitate improved access to health care.

The initiative will use established AHA approaches of primary data collection, including the Get With The Guidelines® - HF program, to identify, implement and evaluate processes and develop new standards for HF patient management. Both health care and patient interventions will produce large-scale data collection from in-patient, out-patient and community settings resulting in generation of real-world evidence that will be used for characterization and dissemination of best practices.