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 The new initiative, called Resolve, will be funded by $225 million
in backing from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“There are proven strategies every country can use to prevent deaths
from heart disease, stroke, and epidemics – but progress has been
painfully slow,” said Frieden, president and chief executive of
Resolve, which will be housed at Vital Strategies, a New York-based
global health organization that works in more than 60 countries.
For Frieden, the initiative allows him to take on some unfinished
business. As part of the $5.4 billion in Ebola emergency funding for
fiscal 2015, the CDC got $1.2 billion for international efforts to
bolster countries' capabilities to identify and fight infectious
disease outbreaks.
"Those dollars will expire within the next year or so," Frieden said
in a telephone briefing.
To fight heart disease, the group will invest in efforts to reduce
the amount of artery-clogging trans-fats from their menus, a reprise
of Frieden's efforts in 2006 as New York City health commissioner to
ban trans-fats from restaurants.
They also aim to support countries' efforts to reduce sodium and
increase treatment of high blood pressure, which kills 10 million
people every year, more than from all infectious diseases combined.
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"If the world is able to increase our blood pressure control rate
from the current 14 percent to 50 percent, reduce dietary sodium by
30 percent and get to zero trans-fats, we can save 100 million lives
from cardiovascular disease over the next 30 years," Frieden told
reporters on a conference call.
The effort also continues Frieden's push at the CDC to bolster
global capabilities to identify and respond to infectious disease.
"The Ebola epidemic revealed how vulnerable we are to threats, and
was a stark reminder of the human and economic costs caused by the
absence of strong public health systems," he said.
Resolve's infectious disease arm attempts to plug gaps in low- and
middle-income countries' capabilities to respond to outbreaks. These
efforts will focus on building disease tracking systems, laboratory
networks and disease detectives "so new threats are identified
quickly," he said.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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