Mariell Jessup M.D. FAHA, Chief Science and Medical Officer of the American Heart Association and past president of the American Heart Association, discusses the AHA's Heart and Stroke Statistics — 2019 Update. copyright American Heart Association "The American Heart Association's Annual Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke Statistical Update is downloaded thousands of times by researchers, community health workers, and associations like ours all over the world. And it's important because it shows you can't change anything if you don't measure it. So it's important to acknowledge the successes, like in physical activity and smoking, so that the programs that have resulted in those beneficial changes can be continually funded or strengthened, and it's also important to see where the alarming trends remain, which is why it's so important to talk about hypertension. We can control hypertension, but we have to keep track of it because so many Americans walk around not knowing they have this deadly disease."