This week, WHF members the British Heart Foundation launched a new website and brand story focused on the wider scope of BHF funded research and its goal to “beat heartbreak forever”.
The British Heart Foundation funds over £100 million ($130 million) of research every year into all heart and circulatory diseases and the things that cause them. This research has helped to ensure that today more people than ever survive heart and circulatory diseases. Nevertheless, these conditions still cause heartbreak for millions of families.
“Over the years, we’ve made huge progress in improving survival rates for single conditions like heart attacks,” said Simon Gillespie, the BHF’s chief executive. “However, today’s figures point towards an emerging and very urgent challenge.”
Nine in ten people with coronary heart disease in the UK are living with at least one other long-term condition, according to new figures released today, and numerous studies have shown that living with multiple conditions significantly increases the risk of early death. The growing number of people living with inter-related health conditions – or multi-morbidities – represents a grave challenge for our health system, which is focused on treating individual illnesses.
Prof. Sir Nilesh Samani, the BHF’s medical director, said: “More research is needed to understand the underlying reasons for the connections between different conditions, and why the number of people living with multiple diseases is rising at such speed.
The new BHF campaign, It Starts With Your Heart, focuses on this interconnectivity of heart & circulatory diseases, such as stroke, vascular dementia and diabetes, and their risk factors. Watch the video below to find out more.
