Mexico City, February 18, 2025 - To strengthen the scaling and institutionalization of the HEARTS initiative in the Americas and in all healthcare delivery subsystems in the country, the workshop "Planning and methodological strengthening meeting. HEARTS in the Americas" began in Mexico, with the participation of the Federal Ministry of Health, through the National Center for Preventive Programs and Disease Control (CENAPRECE), and the ministries of health of Chile, El Salvador, Guyana and Cuba.
At the opening of the regional meeting, the director of CENAPRECE, Rafael Valdez Vázquez, stressed that the current government administration seeks to implement healthcare protocols linked to strategies that have internationally proven to have an impact on improving the quality of care for specific conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and hypertension.
For this reason, he added, the regional and national workshops, planned between February 17 and 20, around the HEARTS Initiative, come at a very opportune moment to reposition and analyze how to adapt and institutionalize the strategy within the health system. "In Mexico, we are at a critical moment because a new structure of medical service providers is emerging, and we have the great opportunity to generate a great standard for hypertension care."
The representative of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) in Mexico, José Moya Medina, recognized the Ministry of Health's efforts to institutionalize the HEARTS initiative to improve the management of cardiovascular risk and hypertension in primary healthcare in the Mexican population.
He highlighted the importance of promoting interventions to prevent cardiovascular diseases, and he said, "HEARTS is an initiative with the potential to reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases in the country and in the region."
PAHO's cardiovascular disease advisor, Pedro Ordúñez, reported that the countries invited to the regional workshop "are those that best implement the HEARTS initiative in the Americas, the countries that have grown the most in implementation throughout their primary health care network...their experience is valuable because in these meetings we look for ways to improve and how we are going to integrate the new developments of this initiative."
On the first day of work, the framework for quality improvement was discussed. In this framework, the leadership of the ministries of health seeks to strengthen primary care systems and thus improve access and quality of care for hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors, which in turn reduces the burden of cardio-reno-metabolic diseases.
