Population health, outcomes research, and prevention: example of the American Heart Association 2020 goals.

In September 2008, Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes was launched to “improve clinical decision making, population health and healthcare policy.”1 This statement affirmed unambiguously that health and clinical care, medicine, and policy were tightly interwoven. Three years later, during times marked by unprecedented healthcare challenges and a global epidemic of obesity and diabetes, the need for the synergy between outcomes research and population health has never been greater. The new American Heart Association (AHA) goals are a powerful example of why such synergy is critical because the effective deployment of the goals requires an effective interaction between outcomes research and population health. This Editor’s Perspective discusses this specific example to illustrate how such an interaction is vital to fighting the epidemic of cardiovascular disease and stroke and can be optimized under the auspices of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.