ACC launches initiative to strengthen cardiovascular disease prevention

A new initiative from the American College of Cardiology (ACC) aims to reduce atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) events on a population scale by addressing persistent gaps in knowledge about cardiovascular disease prevention and implementation in clinical practice. ADVANCE-ASCVD is designed to advance cardiovascular prevention by translating evidence into practice and improving how cardiovascular risk is identified and managed across diverse populations and care settings.

ASCVD is the leading cause of death around the world, despite decades of advances and research in treatment and prevention. Evidence shows that reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), or "bad cholesterol," significantly lowers the risk of myocardial infarction, stroke and cardiovascular death; however, many high-risk ASCVD patients remain above LDL-C targets. In real-world clinical practice, the translation of this evidence into consistent, guideline-directed care is inconsistent.

The opportunity today is not simply to treat disease better after it occurs, but to identify risk earlier and intervene before disease develops. Prevention is evolving from periodic snapshots to continuous, longitudinal assessment, and through ADVANCE-ASCVD we are propelling forward one of the most important shifts in cardiovascular care since the widespread adoption of preventive therapies.​"

Roxana Mehran, MD, FACC, ACC President

ADVANCE-ASCVD will be organized around five strategic pillars:

1. Education and Knowledge Dissemination - Develop and disseminate guideline-aligned education and practical resources that help clinicians, care teams and health systems translate evolving cardiovascular prevention evidence into practice.
2. Clinical Implementation and Decision Science - Apply implementation science, quality improvement and decision-support strategies to address barriers to evidence adoption and improve systems of care.
3. Evidence and Insight Generation - Use real-world data, clinician insights and pragmatic research to understand care patterns, identify gaps and evaluate approaches to improving cardiovascular prevention.
4. Patient and Population Health - Increase patient awareness, engagement and activation while advancing scalable approaches to earlier risk identification and prevention across diverse populations.
5. Innovation and Global Scale - Leverage digital health, AI and emerging technologies and ACC's global network to develop, evaluate and scale innovative prevention strategies across different care settings and geographies.

Merck is a founding sponsor of ADVANCE-ASCVD, supporting a preliminary portfolio of activities focused on lipid-related cardiovascular risk and LDL-C management. The initial area of focus within ADVANCE-ASCVD will be improvement of lipid management and reduction of LDL-C-related cardiovascular risk. This work aligns with the recently released 2026 ACC/AHA Guideline on the Management of Dyslipidemia and will explore approaches to improving awareness, risk identification, guideline implementation, treatment optimization and patient engagement. The framework is designed to include multiple sponsors and expand over time to address additional cardiovascular risk factors and prevention priorities.

"Despite decades of progress, a significant gap still remains between what we know about preventing cardiovascular disease and how that care is delivered to patients in the real world," said Bjorn Oddens, MD, PhD, senior vice president and head of value and implementation, Merck Research Laboratories. "Our sponsorship of ADVANCE-ASCVD is rooted in a shared mission with ACC - helping address the CV epidemic in the hopes of making a difference for patients. We're proud to support this initiative focused on improving critical areas of cardiovascular care such as early risk detection, prevention and LDL-C management."