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Statement by the President on the Crusade Against Heart Disease.

February 02, 1950

THE Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service has called heart diseases, which annually kill more than 625,000 men, women, and children, our most challenging public health problem. They are the Nation's leading cause of death. Measures to cope with this threat are of immediate concern to every one of us.

Such measures are already making themselves felt. Extensive efforts are being made to control heart diseases. Nationwide programs, both governmental and voluntary, aimed at the reduction of death and disability due to cardiovascular disease, are functioning on a wide scale.

Many of our finest scientific minds, our most highly skilled physicians, our civicminded business and professional leaders, are enlisted in this great crusade. But they cannot be expected to do the whole job by themselves. Victory in the fight they are waging for all the people can be achieved only with the cooperation of the general public.

I, therefore, urge every citizen to learn the facts about heart diseases and the steps that are being taken to combat them. I urge every citizen, for his own sake and that of the Nation as a whole, to give wholehearted support to physicians and scientists engaged in an unceasing battle against heart diseases.

Harry S Truman, Statement by the President on the Crusade Against Heart Disease. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230519

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