HEARTS in the Americas

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the Americas, and high blood pressure accounts for over 50% of CVD. Unfortunately, in the Americas, over a quarter of adult women and four in ten adult men have hypertension, and the diagnosis, treatment, and control are suboptimal. Remarkably, only a few countries exhibit a population hypertension control rate of over 50%.

Corruption and its relation to prevalence and death due to noncommunicable diseases and risk factors: a global perspective

Objective

To describe the relation between corruption indicators and statistics on noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors by continent.

Methods

An ecological study was conducted to examine the relation of the GINI coefficient, the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), and the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) with noncommunicable diseases, using the Spearman’s rank correlation test.

The HEARTS app: a clinical tool for cardiovascular risk and hypertension management in primary health care

HEARTS in the Americas is the regional adaptation of the World Health Organization’s Global Hearts Initiative, which will be the model for risk management for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in primary health care in the Region of the Americas by 2025. It has already been implemented in 21 countries and 1045 primary health care centers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It takes a public health and health systems approach to systematically introduce simplified interventions at the primary health care level and focuses on hypertension as a clinical entry point.

Estimating national excess mortality from subnational data: application to Argentina

This paper presents a method to estimate excess mortality where national data are missing for some or all of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic period, but subnational data exist, such as in Argentina. By making use of the stability of the regional distribution of deaths, data on deaths in Córdoba province were used to project excess deaths in Argentina from March 2020 up to the end of 2021. The number of excess deaths was estimated at 134 504, which is 14.8% higher than the reported number of COVID-19 deaths in Argentina for the same time period.

Combination of COVID-19 vaccines and their efficacy: a theoretical proposal

In the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the entire world is concerned with achieving desired herd immunity to overcome the current health crisis. Estimating the efficacy that could be attained in a population by combining vaccines of different brands or technologies would be a valuable asset for public health decision-makers in the present pandemic and in similar future scenarios. This article provides a mathematical formula to estimate probable efficacy against COVID-19 when administering two vaccines in a specific population.

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