Sam Cykert, MD, professor of medicine in the division of general medicine and epidemiology, led a data-driven intervention to prevent an estimated 6,000 heart attacks, strokes, and deaths due to cardiovascular disease at 219 North Carolina clinics. The results, published in Health Services Research, show that practices were able to reduce the percent of patients at a high 10-year risk of serious cardiovascular events from 23 percent to 17 percent – a relative reduction of 25 percent of patients. After adjusting for clinical-patient efforts outside this intervention, the 25 percent reduction is essentially equivalent to preventing 6,000 patients from suffering a heart attack or stroke, or dying due to cardiovascular disease within 10 years.
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