Lead: Tracy Vaillancourt
Brain and cardiovascular diseases remain the leading causes of disability, morbidity, and mortality globally, with growing evidence that risk trajectories begin early in life and escalate across the lifespan. Prevention efforts remain fragmented across disease silos, age groups, and care settings, with major inequities in brain-heart health in Canadian communities, disproportionately affecting Indigenous peoples, marginalized populations, racial/ethnic minorities, LGBTQ2S+ and intersectional groups. There is a critical need for integrated, data-driven prevention strategies that identify upstream drivers of brain–heart vulnerability and allow customized strategies for early intervention, adaptation to diverse communities and life stages and scaling for population-level impact.
The goal of the Risk Prevention pillar is reducing interconnected brain and heart conditions through proactive prevention and timely intervention at the earliest opportunity to mitigate progression and complications for individuals, communities and society.
Strategic Priorities
- Develop, implement and evaluate brain–heart disease prevention guidelines (e.g. C-CHANGE) across clinical and community settings.
- Identify upstream drivers of brain–heart vulnerability across the lifespan, and effective mitigation strategies (e.g. school-based risk reduction initiatives, life-style interventions).
- Develop and test targeted prevention strategies for high-risk populations for brain and heart complications (including Indigenous, gender diverse, racialized minorities, marginalized communities and others).
