The Australian Cardiovascular Alliance (ACvA) welcomes the Australian Government’s launch of the National Chronic Conditions Strategic Framework 2026–35, which sets Australia’s long-term plan to prevent and manage chronic illness.
Four million Australians, nearly one in seven, are living with heart disease, a leading driver of health spending, costing approximately $16.9 billion in 2023–24. With the framework now in place and a commitment of $109.9 million over three years through the Chronic Conditions Prevention and Integrated Care Program, ACvA looks forward to working with government on tackling the leading cause of burden of disease and improving cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and patient care.
A key component of the framework addresses comprehensive monitoring of chronic conditions, tracking essential health measures to inform evidence-based decision-making, resource allocation, and timely responses to emerging priorities. This aligns directly with ACvA’s national leadership in establishing a comprehensive, timely national cardiovascular data platform for Australia.
“We can’t improve what we don’t measure," says ACvA President Professor Jamie Vandenberg. "Despite major investment in Australia’s health data systems, we still lack the depth of clinical data needed across the full patient journey from risk factors and diagnosis through to treatment and long-term outcomes to understand what works, for whom, and where the gaps lie.”
Better cardiovascular data will benefit all Australians and is essential for addressing how CVD affects women differently to men, and for tackling the disproportionate burden of CVD on First Nations peoples and other priority populations.
Dr Andrew Goodman, National Hypertension Taskforce Member and Project Lead for the ACvA funded Preventing, detecting and effectively treating hypertension in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples program agrees, highlighting the disproportionately higher rates of CVD, hypertension, diabetes and chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults.
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are more than three times as likely to develop high blood pressure, and twice as likely to die earlier of CVD compared to non-Indigenous Australians. They are also three and a half times as likely to have diabetes and 5 times as likely to be hospitalised for CKD. Better data collection and standardisation across the health ecosystem allows us to make informed decisions that respond to the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” says Dr Goodman.
“The framework sets the right direction. Now we need the data infrastructure to deliver on it,” says Professor Vandenberg.
ACvA’s 2026–27 pre-budget submission calls on the Australian Government to invest in a national cardiovascular data platform, a critical step towards delivering on the promise of the National Chronic Conditions Strategic Framework.
