May Measurement Month 2018: a pragmatic global screening campaign to raise awareness of blood pressure by the International Society of Hypertension

Aims Raised blood pressure (BP) is the biggest contributor to mortality and disease burden worldwide and fewer than half of those with hypertension are aware of it. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global campaign set up in 2017, to raise awareness of high BP and as a pragmatic solution to a lack of formal screening worldwide. The 2018 campaign was expanded, aiming to include more participants and countries. Methods and results Eighty-nine countries participated in MMM 2018. Volunteers (≥18 years) were recruited through opportunistic sampling at a variety of screening sites. Each participant had three BP measurements and completed a questionnaire on demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Hypertension was defined as a systolic BP ≥140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg, or taking antihypertensive medication. In total, 74.9% of screenees provided three BP readings. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute missing readings. 1 504 963 individuals (mean age 45.3 years; 52.4% female) were screened. After multiple imputation, 502 079 (33.4%) individuals had hypertension, of whom 59.5% were aware of their diagnosis and 55.3% were taking antihypertensive medication. Of those on medication, 60.0% were controlled and of all hypertensives, 33.2% were controlled. We detected 224 285 individuals with untreated hypertension and 111 214 individuals with inadequately treated (systolic BP ≥ 140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥ 90 mmHg) hypertension. Conclusion May Measurement Month expanded significantly compared with 2017, including more participants in more countries. The campaign identified over 335 000 adults with untreated or inadequately treated hypertension. In the absence of systematic screening programmes, MMM was effective at raising awareness at least among these individuals at risk

2022 World Hypertension League, Resolve To Save Lives and International Society of Hypertension dietary sodium (salt) global call to action

This fact sheet and global call to action is aimed at nutrition, hypertension, cardiovascular and other health care clinicians and scientists, and health advocates, as well as the organizations to which they belong. The ‘call’ is to align these audiences with the facts on: the burden of disease and key evidence supporting reductions in dietary sodium, the consistent recommendations for reducing dietary sodium from unbiased and comprehensive health and scientific reviews, the current levels of sodium intake, the cost savings expected from reducing high dietary sodium, the sources of controversial opinions, the current recommended approaches to reduce dietary sodium, and how to stay up to date with evidence on how to reduce dietary sodium and the evolving research on the adverse health effects of a high sodium intake. Health, nutrition, hypertension and cardiovascular organizations, and their members, need to become more engaged and advocate for reductions in dietary sodium, and for a greater priority to be given to high quality research on dietary sodium. The World Hypertension League, Resolve to Save Lives and International Society of Hypertension are committed to support reductions in dietary sodium as a high priority