Last week, the Washington Post published an op-ed by former CDC Director Tom Frieden titled, “It’s the world’s leading killer. Make it the focus of the next breakthrough.” Frieden writes, “Hypertension, the ‘silent killer,’ is the deadliest but most neglected and widespread pandemic of our time, killing more than 10 million people a year worldwide.”
I strongly endorse Frieden’s call to action, but I am baffled by his policy prescription. To reduce the global toll of hypertension, he urges the world to spend substantial sums of money on a complex mix of prevention and treatment strategies that have repeatedly fallen short. If we keep doing the same things over and over again, we’re unlikely to achieve a different result.