Our Mission and Vision

Vision: A world free from the threat of heart attack.

Mission: To eradicate heart attack by championing new strategies for prevention while advancing the scientific quest for a cure.

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Our Path towards a Heart Attack Free Future:

It is difficult for people to imagine a future in which heart attack is no longer a common threat. In fact, heart attacks have become so much a part of our daily lives that we have accepted them as the natural and inevitable cause of death. However, thanks to recent breakthroughs that revolutionized the field of heart disease and shed light on the underlying cause of heart attack, preventative cardiology has gained a new life. These discoveries along with the advancement of medical technologies have opened our way to detection and treatment of the Vulnerable Patient (those at risk of a heart attack in near future).

Through the following eras, the Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication is working to make the eradication of heart attack a reality. SHAPE is proactively proceeding to ensure its vision by promoting the following three phases of development:

1) Era of Screening -

Searching for and saving of the vulnerable patient: The Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication has launched the SHAPE Program, which begins with Framingham Risk Scoring and adds a multi-step risk stratification strategy. When appropriate noninvasive screening is utilized to assure that asymptomatic, at risk individuals are not overlooked.

2) Era of "PolyPill" -

Mass protective therapy of the at-risk population by using an effective, safe, and inexpensive cocktail of drugs: As the combination or "cocktails" of highly effective drugs becomes widely studied, available and less cost prohibitive, we envision that such developments will ease the burden of intensive multi-step screening tests, especially in developing nations. Once achieved, most at-risk individuals will be eligible to receive prophylactic drug therapies that can stabilize their disease in sub-clinical levels.

3) Era of Vaccine -

Primary prevention through immune modulation and vaccination strategies: The Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication strives to go beyond simply stabilizing the condition of those at risk to heart attack. In order to realize our vision of a future free from heart attack, we are supporting research that leads to the development of an "atherovaccine," a heart attack vaccine that can prevent the development of atherosclerosis in early stages of life. The vaccination strategy we envision would mirror other successful vaccination campaigns that have eradicated diseases such as polio and smallpox, with universal inoculations that would effectively end the threat of heart attack.