Meharry Medical College has joined forces with Novartis, one of the largest health care companies in the world, to tackle the nations’ leading cause of death — cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is responsible for one in every three deaths nationwide. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Heart Association and other health authorities, CVD disproportionately affects racial minorities, women and low-income populations. One person in the U.S. dies every 34 seconds from cardiovascular disease, yet approximately 80 percent of these premature CVD deaths are preventable.
The program kick-off began Wednesday morning, July 15, with an overview introducing the initiative to Nashville, presented by Dr. Daniel Dawes, founding dean of the Meharry Medical College School of Global Health. The program also featured community discussions with leaders from the National Medical Association, the Mayor’s Office, the Nashville Metro Public Health Department, hospital and health system partners and community leaders and stakeholders. At the kick-off event, local and national experts discussed how the HEART Initiative is the connective tissue uniting city officials, community leaders, health systems and policymakers to deliver on the promise of health for everyone in Nashville.
“It’s going to take all of us from different areas of government, philanthropy and corporate America to harness the power of collaboration to affect these changes,” Dawes said. “We must develop policies that allow us to address these issues.”
The Health Assessments and Rapid Transformation (HEART) Initiative is a partnership with founding partner Novartis, Loma Linda University Health, Corewell Health, the local community, health systems and government officials to reduce cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the U.S.
HEART is a five-year collaborative that — with guidance and teamwork among community voices coupled with research, policy and technology — will create models that can be reproduced and scaled nationwide to produce better health outcomes.
Nashville has always been on the forefront of innovating to meet communities where they are, both as the home to the nation’s oldest and largest Black health sciences institution and now, being known as America’s Health Care Capital. With more than 900 health care companies, world-class academic medical centers and 150 years of Meharry’s service to the city and nation, Nashville has everything it needs to make a difference in zip codes where cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death.
“For too long we have excluded community members from designing the interventions that are often times imposed on them,” Dawes noted. “We have a ‘we, not me’ approach to improve heart health in the city of Nashville.”
Meharry Medical College (MMC) is a historically Black academic health sciences center founded in 1876 that trains qualified physicians, scientists and dentists from every demographic to heal underserved communities. MMC educates its students in the school’s 150-year heritage of healing the whole person and advancing public health. True to its heritage, it is a United Methodist Church-related institution. Diverse Issues in Higher Education’s ranking of institutions annually lists Meharry as a leading national educator of African Americans with M.D. and D.D.S. degrees and Ph.D. degrees in the biomedical sciences. Learn more about Meharry at www.meharry.edu.
Meharry will be a prominent feature at the National Medical Association (NMA) Annual Convention & Scientific Assembly in San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 25 – 29, 2026, where their theme is “The New Reconstruction — Mobilizing Healthcare Justice for a New America: Our Patients, Providers, and Policy.” Learn more about it at: https://nmanet.org/
