Health literacy and primordial prevention in childhood—an opportunity to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease

Despite major achievements in risk factor control and clinical care over the last decades, cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for approximately 31% of deaths annually. A large amount of the burden of CVD can be attributed to modifiable behavioral risk factors, such as obesity, smoking, poor diet, and physical inactivity. However, major challenges are triggering and maintaining behavior change during a patient’s lifetime. This may in part be because of inadequacies in health literacy, in that almost 50% of US and European adults do not understand or are not able to apply general health information.