The Progetto Cuore – epidemiology and prevention of cardio and cerebrovascular diseases-is coordinated by the “Department of cardiovascular disease, endocrine and metabolic disorders and ageing” of the National health institute (istituto superiore di sanità- Iss).

 

The Progetto Cuore was launched in 1998 thanks to a collaboration between four research groups lead by physicians with the same background knowledge (MONICA-Brianza – Prof. Marco Ferrario; MONICA-Friuli – Dott. Diego Vanuzzo; ATENA – Prof. Salvatore Panico; MATISS – Dott.ssa Simona Giampaoli) and thanks to funding of the Ministry of health.

 

In the frame of the Progetto Cuore many activities have been performed, thanks to the work done by researchers and technicians of the National Health institute (Iss), to the cooperation with other Italian or foreign research groups, and to the participation to projects funded by the Ministry of Health and the European union. The results of this activities play a very important role for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases in the \adult population:

• development of the risk charts and of a software that allow to evaluate the risk score to predict cardiovascular risk in a easily manner
• Implementation of a periodical population examination on a national level, which allow to gather many information: degree of study, lifestyle, pathological anamnesis, pharmacological anamnesis, family medical history and a direct, standardized measure of risk factors for chronic diseases
• Creation of a queryable database, CuoreData, which provide the most relevant statistics on the health status of the Italian adult population
• Creation and activation of the National Register of major coronary and cerebrovascular events
• Fulfillment of a biological sample storage connected to a wide population database
• Creation of an educational plan on the evaluation of cardiovascular risk, which has been thought for General Practitioners
• The study of the etiological role of new risk factors on cardiovascular risk prediction.

Since 2005 the Progetto Cuore have been participating to the activities of the National center for disease prevention and control (Centro nazionale per la prevenzione e il controllo delle malattie Ccm), Ministry of health, with many different projects.

 

In Italy, the Progetto Cuore collaborates with:

• The National Association of Hospital Cardiologists – (ANMCO) and Health Care Foundation
• National Cancer Institute MilanMonzino Cardiology Center  General Inspectorate for Military Health (Igesan)

The Progetto Cuore participates to the following international collaborations, consortia, projects, networks, and joint actions:

• “Action Network on measuring population and organizational health literacy M-POHL”, an international network established under the umbrella of the WHO European Health Information Initiative (EHII) aiming at measuring the level of health literacy in the population and in the management and organization of health systems (network M-POHL)
• “InfAct-Information for Action”, European joint action aiming at setting-up a sustainable and solid infrastructure on EU health information system which supports knowledge, research and health policy
• “European Health Examination Survey (EHES)”, a joint action between EU Countries which organize national health examination surveys  (HES). EHES aims to ensure high quality and comparable results of the surveys
• “Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD)”, the most wide and complete project to measure characteristics of epidemiological trends worldwide
• “NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)”, a network composed by researchers coming from 200 different Countries, which provide updated data on chronic disease’s risk factors
• “Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration (ERFC)”, a collaborative group which balance data collected over more than 30 different Countries to study risk factors and specific cause mortality for cardiovascular diseases
• “BiomarCaRE (Biomarker for Cardiovascular Risk Assessment in Europe)”, an international research project aiming at evaluating biomarkers for prediction of cardiovascular diseases in the European population
• “MORGAM (MOnica Risk, Genetics, Archiving and Monograph) Project”, an international collaborative study which aims at exploring the relationship between cardiovascular diseases, classic and genetic risk factors, and biomarkers
• “European CKD Burden Consortium”, focused on the epidemiologic study of chronic kidney disease