UNIFIED POLITICAL INITIATIVES are needed across Europe to have any long-term influence on public health, says Lars Ryden, who this afternoon will deliver this year's Geoffrey Rose lecture on Population Sciences. It's his view that for the medical profession to have any long-term influence in the prevention of CVD, they must become more engaged in political life.
Ryden, Professor Emeritus at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, a former President of the ESC (1998-2000) and currently Co-Chair of the ESC Committee for European Union Relations, spent his early career in conventional cardiology, covering conditions such as arrhythmia, cardiac pacing, heart failure and cardiovascular diseases related to diabetes. But this very work, he later realised, was extending lives and resulting in a growing mountain of people who are ill. “ What we have to concentrate on is prevention," he says, "because we can't continue to create a society which makes people ill and then have to invest so heavily in curing them."
In his Geoffrey Rose lecture today Ryden will review the ESC's engagement in the politics of prevention which led in 2007 to the launch of the European Heart Health Charter. The sequence of events, Ryden recalls, began in 2002, when the ESC approached the Spanish Presidency of the EU about a declaration on CVD prevention. Two years later, during Ireland's Presidency of the EU (January to June 2004), the European Commission, Irish ministries and the ESC staged a conference in Cork, Ireland, which developed benchmark data standards for clinical cardiology, also formally concluded that CVD was the largest cause of death in the EU and mostly preventable through lifestyle changes and appropriate use of medicines. The meeting called on the Commission and EU member states to ensure that appropriate action was taken to address CVD.
In 2005 the Luxembourg Declaration formalised an agreement between national ministries, cardiac societies, the EU and ESC to strengthen prevention plans and ensure that member states should "give priority" to lifestyle interventions for the reduction of CVD in Europe. Two years later, the European Health Charter, launched in June 2007, created the “strong and simple” message that 4.35 million people die from CVD in Europe each year and that CVD is "eminently preventable".
Ryden is now directing his administrative magic at a new European chronic disease initiative to present a joint effort from European health associations in their battle against heart disease, cancer, respiratory and renal disease, and diabetes.
He was the driving force behind the Prevention of Chronic Diseases Expert Conference, held at the ESC's European Heart House in June this year, where experts from ten European chronic disease associations agreed to focus their initial prevention efforts against smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, overweight, obesity and physical inactivity. It was in these areas that the highest level of evidence was thought available to support interventions with the greatest likely benefits.
Three named lectures take place today in Rome - Zone 3
- Geoffrey Rose lecture on population sciences
L Ryden, Cardiovascular disease prevention in Europe, 14:00-14.30
- Rene Laennec lecture on clinical cardiology
JL Lopez-Sendon, The clinical cardiologist, doomed for extinction or survival through evolution? 14:30-15:00
- Philip Poole-Wilson lecture on heart failure
R Ferrari, 15:00-15.30
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