Heart attacks and strokes contribute to the almost 800,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease each year. The trauma to families and communities is devastating; the cost to the US economy is nearly $1 billion each day in medical costs and lost productivity. To achieve sustainable prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services launched Million Hearts®, a national initiative to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes by 2017.

In this session of Grand Rounds, viewers learned about the progress that has been made, along with the work that is still needed to reach the goal of preventing one million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. The session also detailed how public health and clinical care experts are coming together in communities to improve blood pressure control, how comprehensive tobacco policy efforts can have statewide impact, and how efforts to promote healthy nutrition can occur through increasing the availability of lower sodium products.

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This video can also be viewed at: http://www.cdc.gov/cdcgrandrounds/archives/2014/september2014.htm