National Vascular Disease Prevention Alliance
The National Stroke Foundation is one of the founding members of the National Vascular Disease Prevention Alliance (NVDPA), which also includes:
The NVDPA was formed to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Australia and much of its work has been promoting the use of an ‘absolute risk’ approach to predicting risk of CVD.
The NVDPA advocates to government and professional bodies for a health system that supports an absolute risk approach. The NVDPA aims to raise awareness among health professionals to use absolute risk assessment in their everyday practice.
The NVDPA released the Guidelines assessment cardiovascular disease risk in March 2009 after approval by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). The NVDPA has now released the first Australian Guidelines for the management of absolute cardiovascular disease risk. The guidelines incorporate and builds on the previous NVDPA Guidelines for the assessment of absolute cardiovascular disease risk (2009) and consolidates a number of other evidence-based guidelines related to primary prevention of CVD. The guideline was launched in May 2012 after approval by the NHMRC.
The online absolute risk calculator is based on the NVDPA guidelines and provides a useful tool for patient assessment and education.