WHF President introduces the World Heart Observatory at WCC 2022
The World Congress of Cardiology (WCC 2022) brought innovation to this last day of sessions with World Heart Observatory, a data structuring platform created by the World Heart Federation (WHF) and launched in February. Fausto Pinto, coordinator of the panel and president of the WHF, highlighted that the Observatory aims include collecting information and data that can provide a basis for interfering in health policies and suggesting appropriate strategies for each region.
Vice-president of the Board of Directors of SBC Andréa Brandão also coordinated the roundtable which included the participation of Mariachiara Di Cesare (Imperial College London) and Pablo Perel (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine).
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), defined by the United Nations (UN), include the reduction of premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one third through prevention and treatment by 2030. According to Pinto, only 14 countries on a global scale are on pace to achieve these goals at the moment. The Observatory was born in this scenario as “a central hub for access to high quality data on cardiovascular health, collected from our members, partners and international data sources”.
The cardiologist pointed out that the data are important for building health policies to achieve this ideal scenario. “The translation of science into health policy is only possible if there is access to concrete and credible data that help to understand the context, as well as quantify the methods that can be integrated”, says Pinto.
One of the great challenges of monitoring data is to gather information from different sources and interpret them in an accessible way, not only for technical bodies, but for the entire population. The World Heart Observatory already includes data from sources such as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC).
Pinto also highlighted that the Observatory’s next steps include launching annual reports (World Heart Report), publishing editorials and articles based on cardiovascular diseases data, creating indicators from new sources through compelling views (including data on policies and systems capabilities health), as well as showing progress towards achieving the global goals.
