American Heart Association

The American Heart Association (AHA) is a voluntary health organisation founded in 1924 by six cardiologists who believed that a scientific understanding of heart disease would yield treatments. It is now the oldest and largest such organisation in the United States, with a mission to reduce death and disability from cardiovascular disease and stroke. Since its founding, deaths from cardiovascular disease have been cut in half.

The association's work spans three main areas. It funds cardiovascular and cerebrovascular research, having invested more than $6 billion to date, which makes it the largest non-governmental funder of such research after the federal government. It runs training programmes, most notably CPR instruction, which reaches some 22 million people a year. And it operates quality care initiatives, including programmes through which more than 19 million patients with high blood pressure receive support, alongside clinical guidelines and care-quality programmes used across the profession.

Headquartered in the United States and active as a global movement, the AHA employs more than 3,300 staff and draws on a base of over 35 million volunteers and supporters. It began as a small professional society of doctors and has since grown into a nationwide volunteer movement.