Training of community volunteers in Antwerp.
Getting to the heart of cardiovascular disease risk Cardiovascular diseases are estimated to cause around 17.9 million deaths every year, affecting people in low-, middle and high-income countries. We spoke to Professor Hilde Bastiaens, and Dr. Geofrey Musinguzi, about their work in the SPICES project in implementing and evaluating prevention and control programmes, which could help reduce the burden on healthcare services. The prevalence of
cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is increasing globally placing a heavy burden on healthcare systems. A number of conditions come under the umbrella of CVD, including stroke and myocardial infarction (or heart attack) and they are generally caused by a complex interplay of factors. “CVD is caused by a combination of hereditary and lifestyle factors, such as stress levels, smoking & eating/drinking habits and levels of physical activity,” explains Hilde Bastiaens, Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Population Health at the University of Antwerp. Early identification and follow up of those at an increased risk of developing CVD is crucial, an issue at the heart of Professor Bastiaens’ work as the coordinator of the SPICES project. “The specific focus of SPICES is on the prevention of CVD, meaning that we profile people so that they can know their risk,” outlines Dr. Geofrey Musinguzi from the Makerere University School of Public Health in Uganda and project manager of SPICES.
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SPICES project
SPICES project team members implementing physical activity during project meeting
SPICES is an acronym for scaling up packages of intervention for cardiovascular disease prevention in selected sites in Europe and subSaharan Africa. The project is implemented in five different settings, including locations in low (Uganda)-, middle (South Africa)- and high-income (Belgium, France and the United Kingdom) countries. “In the global north, the project is targeted primarily at vulnerable populations,” outlines Professor Bastiaens. “We are reaching people in deprived areas and working collaboratively with different partners for sustainability”. For example, the UK Sussex SPICES team has been building links with the Sussex Health and Care Partnership, a local NHS clinical commissioning group in Brighton. SPICES-Sussex partly operates within this network. SPICES Nottingham works in the Nottingham conurbation and works to supplement the NHS Health Check programme for the over 40s with communitybased screening of CVD risk for all consenting adults. In France, the project is implemented in the “Pays Centre Ouest Bretagne” (COB),
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