{ "release_id": "73130c34862e2d06", "id": "cardio:lifes-essential-8", "owner": "cardio", "kind": "care_topic", "slug": "lifes-essential-8", "name": "Life's Essential 8", "aliases": [], "atlases": [ "cardio" ], "summary_plain": "Life's Essential 8 is the American Heart Association's way of scoring heart health. It looks at eight things: diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep, body mass index, blood fats, blood sugar and blood pressure. Each gets 0 to 100 points, and the average of the eight is the overall score, also 0 to 100. It updates the AHA's earlier Life's Simple 7, adds sleep health, and is meant for people across the whole life course. This page describes the score as the AHA defines it; it does not record how well the score predicts outcomes.", "summary_technical": "AHA presidential advisory (Circulation, 2022; PubMed 35766027); only the PubMed abstract was read (the PMC copy is not in the open-access subset). The abstract says diet, nicotine exposure, blood lipids and blood glucose were updated, sleep health is new, and the age spectrum was expanded to the entire life course. The composite score is the unweighted average of the components. The advisory also discusses social determinants of health and psychological health as foundational contexts and methods for implementing assessment; none of that detail is recorded here.", "editorial_state": "draft", "last_substantive_edit": "2026-10-15", "last_evidence_check": "2026-10-15", "next_review_due": null, "identifiers": [], "navigation": { "cardio": { "system": [ "heart" ], "condition-area": [ "risk-and-prevention" ] } }, "payload": { "scope": "A scoring construct for cardiovascular health with eight components (diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep health, body mass index, blood lipids, blood glucose and blood pressure), scored 0 to 100 each, and a composite score that is the unweighted average of the components. The AHA expanded its age spectrum to the entire life course.", "life_stages": [ "Whole life course (AHA advisory abstract)" ], "life_stage_terms": null, "care_setting": null }, "content_digest": "ddfa89c9b6c173fd4755f464d9836a0f02fd74010c18807548da3a8a25125b43", "review": { "content_digest": "ddfa89c9b6c173fd4755f464d9836a0f02fd74010c18807548da3a8a25125b43", "current": [], "conflicting": [], "stale": [], "inactive": [] }, "claims": [ { "release_id": "73130c34862e2d06", "id": "cardio:claim-lifes-essential-8-components", "owner": "cardio", "subject_entity_id": "cardio:lifes-essential-8", "category": "descriptive", "statement": "The American Heart Association's presidential advisory introduces Life's Essential 8 as an enhanced approach to assessing cardiovascular health. Its components are diet (updated), physical activity, nicotine exposure (updated), sleep health (new), body mass index, blood lipids (updated), blood glucose (updated) and blood pressure. Each metric has a new scoring algorithm ranging from 0 to 100 points, and the unweighted average of the components gives a composite cardiovascular health score that also varies from 0 to 100 points. The age spectrum was expanded to include the entire life course.", "context": { "id": "cardio:ctx-lifes-essential-8-whole-life-course", "label": "Whole life course, American Heart Association's cardiovascular health score", "recipient": "mixed", "population": "Individuals and populations across the whole life course (the advisory abstract says the age spectrum was expanded to include the entire life course).", "care_setting": "Not stated in the source: the abstract mentions policy, public health, clinical, institutional and community settings for implementation.", "geography": "Not stated in the source.", "life_stage_note": "Whole life course", "life_stage_terms": null, "gestational_age_min_days": null, "gestational_age_max_days": null, "gestational_age_basis": null, "postnatal_age_min_days": null, "postnatal_age_max_days": null, "gestational_age_status": null, "postnatal_age_status": null, "followup_description": "Not stated in the source.", "eligibility": { "inclusion": [], "exclusion": [] } }, "evidence_stage": "guidance", "certainty": "not_assessed", "certainty_method": null, "limitations": "This is the American Heart Association's definition of its own score. The abstract gives no data on how well the score predicts outcomes. Only the PubMed abstract was read; the PMC copy is not in the open-access subset.", "editorial_state": "draft", "checked_at": "2026-10-15", "next_review_due": null, "valid_from": null, "valid_to": null, "citations": [ { "evidence_role": "supports", "locator": "Abstract, paragraph 1, sentences 5 to 9", "applicability_note": "Components, scoring and age spectrum.", "snapshot": { "id": "cardio:pubmed-35766027-2026-10-15", "retrieved_at": "2026-10-15T13:48:15Z", "content_hash": "8bdb4a57234216d39ecfe9513273a4e389dcafc78b879acf61a96ecf5988874c", "source_effective_date": null, "public_archive_url": null, "source_state": "current" }, "source": { "id": "cardio:pubmed-10-1161-cir-0000000000001078", "source_type": "publication", "title": "Life's Essential 8: Updating and Enhancing the American Heart Association's Construct of Cardiovascular Health: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association", "canonical_url": "https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001078", "identifiers": [ { "scheme": "doi", "value": "10.1161/CIR.0000000000001078", "normalized_value": "10.1161/cir.0000000000001078", "match": "exact", "version": null, "label": null, "from_source": false }, { "scheme": "pmid", "value": "35766027", "normalized_value": "35766027", "match": "exact", "version": null, "label": null, "from_source": false }, { "scheme": "pmcid", "value": "PMC10503546", "normalized_value": "PMC10503546", "match": "exact", "version": null, "label": null, "from_source": false } ], "publication_date": "2022-08-02", "publisher": "Circulation", "edition": "PubMed record (abstract and bibliographic data) from NCBI E-utilities. The full text and the version of record were not fetched.", "reuse_basis": "PubMed record fetched through NCBI E-utilities. Only the hash of the bytes is kept, because publisher copyright may apply to the abstract (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/disclaimer/). Short factual quotations under 25 words, with the citation.", "public_text": "quote", "replaced_by": null, "retirement_note": null } } ], "review": { "content_digest": "86510cfd3ed46e0ae0977df5cd3cba1b032326f3439ba6a37e4f3d4c7a770bcf", "current": [], "conflicting": [], "stale": [], "inactive": [] }, "api_path": "api/v1/claims/cardio--claim-lifes-essential-8-components.json" } ], "decisions": [], "milestones": [], "relationships": { "outgoing": [ { "predicate": "related_to", "label": "A scoring construct for the steps in heart-healthy living", "clinical_claim_not_fact": false, "family": "navigation", "other_entity_id": "cardio:heart-healthy-living", "other_entity_in_atlas": true, "claim_id": null, "evidence": null, "primary": false, "role": null, "valid_from": null, "valid_to": null }, { "predicate": "related_to", "label": "AHA presidential advisory", "clinical_claim_not_fact": false, "family": "navigation", "other_entity_id": "core:aha", "other_entity_in_atlas": true, "claim_id": null, "evidence": null, "primary": false, "role": null, "valid_from": null, "valid_to": null }, { "predicate": "part_of", "label": "Filed under this front", "clinical_claim_not_fact": false, "family": "navigation", "other_entity_id": "cardio:front-prevention-and-lifestyle", "other_entity_in_atlas": true, "claim_id": null, "evidence": null, "primary": true, "role": null, "valid_from": null, "valid_to": null } ], "incoming": [] }, "page_path": "care-topics/lifes-essential-8/", "context_path": "api/v1/context/cardio--lifes-essential-8.md" }