One Calculator. Three Risk Scores. A Smarter Way to Protect Your Heart.

Most of us know the basics: eat well, exercise, don’t smoke. But do you actually know your personal risk of developing heart disease, stroke, or heart failure over the next decade — or the next 30 years?

The American Heart Association (AHA) has launched the PREVENT™ calculator — a free, online tool that gives a far more comprehensive and personalized picture of cardiovascular risk than anything that came before it. Here’s what you need to know.

What Is the PREVENT Calculator?

PREVENT stands for Predicting Risk of cardiovascular disease EVENTs. It’s the AHA’s newest risk estimation tool, developed from data on more than 6.5 million diverse U.S. adults and published in the AHA’s flagship journal, Circulation, in November 2023.

The calculator estimates your 10-year and 30-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease — specifically heart attack, stroke, and heart failure — if you are between the ages of 30 and 79 and have not been previously diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

What Information Does the Calculator Use?

To use the PREVENT calculator, you’ll enter a set of standard health measurements. The core inputs include:

• Age
• Sex
• Cholesterol levels (total cholesterol and HDL)
• Systolic blood pressure
• BMI
• Kidney function (estimated GFR, a blood test result)
• Smoking status
• Whether you take blood pressure or cholesterol-lowering medications
• Whether you have Type 2 diabetes

What the Calculator Is — and Isn’t

It’s worth being clear about one important point: the PREVENT calculator is a clinical tool, designed to be used by healthcare professionals in conversation with patients. It is not intended to be self-administered and interpreted in isolation.

The output — a separate risk score for total cardiovascular disease, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), and heart failure — is meant to inform discussion between you and your doctor, not to replace it. Your clinician can help you understand what your score means in the context of your full health picture and what, if anything, should change.

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