At the TIME100 Health Impact Dinner in New York City on Thursday, TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar kicked off a panel discussion with one big question: Why is heart disease still the leading cause of death for men and women?
“Perhaps before we answer the question of why it’s the leading cause of death today,” replied Dr. Sadiya Khan, a professor of cardiovascular epidemiology and an associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, “we have to know where we started.”
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She began by telling a story: In 1945, when then-President Franklin Roosevelt died, his death seemed “sudden and unexpected,” Khan said. But looking back at the notes from his doctors, Khan said, it’s clear that he had had very high blood pressure for years that was untreated.
“None of us would sit on that today,” Khan said. “We now know we can treat blood pressure. We can add years, decades of life by treating blood pressure. But we still don’t do it. And we still don’t achieve that success.”
Millions of people in the U.S. have high blood pressure, but many of them don’t receive adequate treatment, Khan said. “So I think the answer is: we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.”
Khan, who was on the 2026 TIME100 Health list for her work on assessing cardiovascular risk early, was joined onstage Thursday by Arianna Huffington, the founder and chief executive officer of health and wellness company Thrive Global, and Victor Bultó, president of Novartis U.S., which sponsored the event in New York City.
Kumar turned the discussion over to Bultó, asking him why Novartis has not only developed therapies to tackle heart disease but has shifted towards addressing human behavior. Bultó, who was also on the 2026 TIME100 Health list, said that the technology that can reduce cardiovascular risk events and add years to many people’s lives already exists—but isn’t being utilized.
“We had to shift from being just a medical sciences company to start shifting into being a social sciences company to understand what is the underlying behavior that actually underpins this,” he said.
Bultó said that his team has learned that humans tend to be “wired to take the dopamine hit of something that gives us pleasure today and discount all the damage it’s going to do in the future.” Now, experts are advocating for greater understanding on how people can change those behaviors.
Khan also talked about her efforts in targeting young women to help them avoid cardiovascular issues later in life. She said that for many young women, healthcare is often focused around pregnancy. And many women experience complications during pregnancy, such as high blood pressure, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes. She herself had gestational diabetes, and she hadn’t realized that it has a connection to heart disease.
“We’re learning so much more that these early markers can actually be signals and be a red flag about the future. And the important thing is not that that’s scary or that means that I’m going to have a heart attack, but that I can do something about it now,” Khan said. “I can focus on the health behaviors that are going to prevent this from progressing and really make a difference. And with that information, we can empower people—young women, young men—to really be able to take hold of their own health much earlier than we used to think about it.”
“I mean, even today, if you Google heart attack or heart disease, you get a picture of an older person, and that’s not where we should be,” she continued. “We have to start much earlier.”
Huffington called it “inspiring” that both Khan, a prominent doctor, and Bultó, the head of a big pharma company, were willing to talk about the impact that both medicines and behaviors can have on human health.
She said that there are five critical behaviors to consider when it comes to health: sleep, stress, food, exercise, and connection.
“It’s a whole new playbook for pharma that used to basically sell you a drug, have a purely transactional relationship with you, and now is changing that to actually be your partner on your health journey, which obviously includes medicines, but it also includes behavior,” Huffington said.
TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Shaping the Future of Health was presented by Novartis and Aster DM.
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