Novartis announces expansion of community health programs to close gaps in heart disease and cancer care, targeting more than 30 countries by 2030

• Strengthens three community health models spanning community‑embedded care, earlier intervention and data‑driven population health
  
  
• Scales program footprint from 11 countries to more than 30 by 2030, including across five cities in the U.S.
  
  
• Builds on pilot programs that demonstrated significant increase in control rates for high blood pressure in pilot settings
  
  

East Hanover, April 9, 2026 – Novartis today announced the expansion of its programs to find and treat patients with heart disease and cancer in hard-to-reach communities around the world. This comes as public health efforts against chronic diseases slow or reverse in many countries.¹ Three distinct Novartis community health approaches focused on closing gaps in care for low-income, rural and other communities will nearly triple from 11 to more than 30 countries by 2030, including:

• Inclusive Health Accelerators (IHAs): a new community-based initiative launching across five U.S. cities this week, which aims to close gaps in access to breast and prostate cancer care communities through disease awareness, better access to screening and referrals for follow‑up care
• Community Health Initiatives (CHIs): programs to speed up diagnosis and treatment for heart disease and cancer in emerging economies will be expanded to at least 10 low- and middle-income countries
• CARDIO4Cities: an approach harnessing real-time data to help cities improve heart health and narrow health disparities, developed by the Novartis Foundation, an independent non-profit organization, plans to roll out across cities in 23 countries
  
  

“We are going further to bring heart disease and cancer care to communities falling through the gaps in health systems,” said Michelle Weese, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Novartis. “With progress slowing against chronic disease in many countries, and millions missing out on potential treatment, there is an urgent need for new, sustainable solutions to improve access to care.”

Each program will involve Novartis teams working together with a distinct network of local groups – including community organizations, health authorities and private businesses – to increase access to prevention and early detection services, improve follow-up care, and speed up the referral process for specialist treatment.

In the U.S., Novartis is launching its community-driven IHA model designed to boost early detection of prostate and breast cancer and address gaps in care among under-reached populations. Beginning in five cities – New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, and Baltimore – the IHAs aim to improve access to education, free screenings, diagnosis, and follow‑up care through tailored and local partnerships. These build on existing U.S. partnerships to tackle cardiovascular disease, including the Health Assessments and Rapid Transformation (HEART) program launched with the School of Global Health at Meharry Medical College last year.

In low- and middle-income countries, Novartis Global Health unit is currently running CHIs in Vietnam, Rwanda and Bolivia to reach patients beyond conventional commercial channels, with expansion planned to at least seven more countries by 2030. The model builds on a successful partnership in rural Vietnam that doubled control rates for high blood pressure and helped more people start treatment closer to their communities.²

CARDIO4Cities, developed by the Novartis Foundation to support cities to improve heart health, is currently operational in eight countries and aims to expand to 23 countries by 2030. It brings together real-time data, AI, and partnerships to strengthen prevention, detection and management of cardiometabolic diseases, proactively reaching people in the community earlier. The approach has demonstrated three- to six-fold increases in hypertension control with associated reductions in stroke and heart attack rates within one to two years of implementation.³ It is currently operational in cities in Brazil (São Paulo, Fortaleza), the U.S. (New York City), Belgium (Leuven), Portugal (Lisbon), Finland (Helsinki), Brunei, Singapore, and Australia (Sydney), with the ambition to reach 30 major cities in 23 countries by 2030.⁴

Disclaimer
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About Novartis
Novartis is an innovative medicines company. Every day, we work to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives so that patients, healthcare professionals and societies are empowered in the face of serious disease. Our medicines reach more than 300 million people worldwide.

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References

1. Bennett, J. E., et al (2025). Benchmarking progress in non-communicable diseases: A global analysis of cause-specific mortality from 2001 to 2019. The Lancet, 406 (10509), 1255–1282.
2. In partnership with the Government of Vietnam, an 18-month pilot program successfully screened 400,000 people, linked 35,000 to local treatment, and helped to achieve a large increase in control rates for high blood pressure (doubling from 32% to 76%) and diabetes (tripling from 27% to 77%). Final Report for the Cung Song Khoe Program 2024-2025, The Health Strategy and Policy Institute, Ministry of Health. PhD. Pharm. Nguyen Khanh Phuong, Director and the Assessment Team
3. Reiker et al (2023). Population health impact and economic evaluation of the CARDIO4Cities approach to improve urban hypertension management. PLOS Glob Public Health. 2023 Apr 11;3(4):e0001480.
4. Major city defined as a city with a population of more than 1,000,000 inhabitants.

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