From ambition to impact: Delivering the EU Safe Hearts Plan

Birgit Beger, CEO of the European Heart Network, discusses the EU’s implementation of the Safe Hearts Plan, emphasising the need to strengthen equitable access to care and the importance of measuring and monitoring these efforts

The EU Safe Hearts Plan is a major step in tackling Europe’s cardiovascular burden. For the European Heart Network (EHN), it is also an opportunity to put into practice the vision of our Strategy 2023–2030: every person in Europe should be able to grow up and live in a sustainable environment that promotes cardiovascular health. Its ambition is to reduce premature and preventable cardiovascular deaths by 30% by 2030, while ensuring personalised care and quality of life for people living with cardiovascular disease.

How the Safe Hearts Plan aligns with the EHN’s mission

EHN’s strategy is built around ‘Leadership for Change’ and three goals: preventing avoidable cardiovascular disease, strengthening the voice of patients and the public, and increasing investment in cardiovascular research. These goals informed EHN’s recommendations for a European cardiovascular health plan: prioritise prevention, empower patients, and strengthen research and innovation, with health equity embedded throughout.

The Commission’s Safe Hearts Plan aligns with this approach. However, its success will depend on how ambitiously Europe addresses the conditions that shape cardiovascular health before risk factors arise. EHN therefore calls for stronger primordial prevention: creating environments in which healthier choices become the default choices for everyone. This should include mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling and restrictions on the marketing of foods high in fat, salt and sugar. It also requires ambitious tobacco and nicotine regulation, including revision of the Tobacco Products Directive, mandatory energy information and health warnings on alcoholic beverages, and effective taxation measures. Cleaner air, aligned with World Health Organization guidance, and environments that enable physical activity must form part of cardiovascular policy.

Early detection remains essential. Systematic pathways for identifying high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol and diabetes can prevent heart attacks and strokes. Yet a health check without timely referral, treatment and follow-up is a missed opportunity. EHN recommends strengthened primary care and integrated pathways linking detection with risk management and appropriate treatment. Our recommendations also call for a 20% increase in hypertension control rates by 2030.

People living with cardiovascular disease must be partners in implementation, not recipients of care. EHN advocates equitable access to essential medicines, expanded cardiac rehabilitation – including telerehabilitation – stronger psychosocial and mental-health support, and systematic patient co-design across care pathways. A people-centred plan must also recognise the consequences cardiovascular disease can have for employment, insurance and financial security.

Ensuring equity and accountability

Policy ambition must be backed by funding and accountability. In the next Multiannual Financial Framework, health promotion and disease prevention need a strong, ring-fenced budget. Funding must reach health organisations and civil society as well as public authorities, because they connect European objectives with patients, communities and national realities. EHN also recommends secured financing, clear governance, transparent monitoring, and national cardiovascular health action plans with measurable targets and regular reporting.

Equity must be a test applied to every action. Socioeconomic circumstances, education, gender, environmental exposure and access to healthcare all shape cardiovascular outcomes. EHN promotes a whole-of-society approach that leaves no one behind, while our members translate this principle into national action. Capacity-building and shared learning within the network help address inequalities between eastern and western Europe, between northern and southern Europe, and within countries. By 2030, EHN recommends reducing the East–West gap in premature cardiovascular mortality by 25% and gender gaps in access to treatment and rehabilitation by 20%.

Comparable data are indispensable. Harmonised definitions, interoperable registries and consistent surveillance would show where prevention and care are succeeding – and who is still being missed. Data should be representative and disaggregated so that geographic, socioeconomic, sex-, gender- and age-related inequalities become visible. Implementing the European Health Data Space offers an opportunity to connect data securely and support better prevention, care, monitoring and research.

EHN is preparing its formal position on artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, a useful guiding principle is that AI in cardiovascular health should widen access to treatment and care, bridge rather than deepen health divides, advance responsible research and improve patients’ quality of life. This will require representative data, transparency, clinical validation and human oversight. AI must serve patients, citizens and public value — not systems, technologies or commercial interests alone.

A collaborative approach supports cardiovascular care

National heart foundations, research organisations and people with lived experience can accelerate implementation. Several EHN members fund cardiovascular research, linking civil society, researchers, clinicians and policymakers. Horizon Europe can address gaps in areas such as cardiovascular disease in women, personalised prevention and implementation science, while EU4Health can support translation into policy and practice. European research partnerships can add capacity where public-interest governance, transparency and meaningful patient involvement are assured.

The Safe Hearts Plan gives Europe a shared direction. Delivering on it requires stronger primordial prevention, empowered patients, action on inequalities, reliable data, responsible innovation, sustained research and dedicated funding. Only by turning these ambitions into sustained action can Europe ensure that everyone, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances, has the opportunity to enjoy a longer, healthier life.