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THE FRAMINGHAM HEART STUDY: LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR PREVENTIVE HEALTH CARE
By the early 1920s, diseases of the heart consistently ranked as the #1 cause of death in the United States.1 Even the President was not immune to this emerging health concern: Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of hemorrhagic stroke in 1945 due to uncontrolled hypertension, raising awareness about the rising toll of cardiovascular disease. Driven by the need to understand this growing threat, the Framingham Heart Study (“Framingham”) was started in 1948 by the U.S. Public Health Service and transferred shortly thereafter to the newly established National Heart Institute (now the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute [NHLBI]) of the National Institutes of Health [NIH]). One of the first long-term cohort studies of its kind,2 Framingham would become known as the crown jewel of epidemiology.
The study has not only contributed enormously to our understanding of the natural history of cardiovascular disease and stroke, it also enabled us to identify their major causal risk factors. Framingham changed the way we study and approach chronic diseases in the medical and public health spheres. Thanks in large part to Framingham, we now go beyond treating disease once it occurs by emphasizing disease prevention and addressing modifiable risk factors. Framingham was an early pioneer in the use of epidemiology to study non-infectious diseases and gave rise to innovative methods that are being put to use in countless studies across the world. The overall impact of the Framingham Heart Study is vast, and the study continues to unveil new insights into human health to this day.
WHAT IS THE FRAMINGHAM HEART STUDY?3
The study, which aimed to unravel the underlying causes of heart disease, started in 1948 with 5,209 participants in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts. Framingham is a longitudinal cohort study, a type of epidemiological study that follows a group of individuals over time to determine the natural history of certain diseases, explore the behavior of those diseases, and identify the factors that might explain their development. Part of the reason Framingham, Massachusetts was picked as the study site was because it was just big enough to provide a sufficient number of individuals for the study, while also small enough to be suited to the community approach of recruiting and effectively following participants over time.4,5 Participants underwent physical examinations, gave blood samples for laboratory tests, and provided lifestyle and medical history information at regular intervals. Now a joint project of the NHLBI and Boston University, Framingham has expanded over the years, both in geographical and population scope. Today it includes many grandchildren and spouses in three generations of participants, as well as two cohorts of minority participants (the Framingham Omni Cohorts).

SELECTED RESEARCH-TO- PRACTICE MILESTONES FOR THE FRAMINGHAM HEART STUDY6
All of the milestones in this timeline were made possible with NIH funding.
THE EARLY DAYS OF
FRAMINGHAM
1948
President Truman signs the National Heart Act, establishing the National Heart Institute (now NHLBI) and allocating $500K to start the Framingham Heart Study.7
Recruitment begins for the original cohort of 5,209 men and women from the town of Framingham, Massachusetts.5
1959
Cigarette smoking is linked to coronary heart disease in Framingham.8
1961
High blood pressure and high cholesterol levels are found to raise heart disease risk, and the term “risk factor” is popularized.9
1964 The Surgeon General releases the first report on smoking and health.10
1967
Obesity and physical inactivity are determined to increase the risk for heart disease.11,12
1968
In one of the first large-scale data sharing efforts of its time, “massive” data tables of Framingham-collected measures are made freely available for outside researchers.13
1970
High blood pressure is linked to increased risk of stroke.14
FRAMINGHAM GROWS
1971 The second generation of participants begins enrolling in the Offspring Cohort.5,15
1974
Diabetes is linked to risk of heart disease.
1976
Heart disease risk is found to increase in women after menopause.16
1983 Irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) is linked to stroke risk.17,18
1984 NIH publishes the first cholesterol guidelines, referencing Framingham findings.19
1988
The Framingham Osteoporosis Study begins.20
Late 1980s to
1990s
As the first-generation cohort reaches their older years, Framingham scientists begin to report risk factors for cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and atrial fibrillation, including high blood pressure and hypertension.21–23
1990 Left ventricular hypertrophy, or thickening of the heart muscle, is identified as a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease and death.24
1994
The Omni 1 Cohort, which includes African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Pacific Islander, and Native American participants, is added to reflect the increasing ethnic and racial diversity of the community.5
1998
Atrial fibrillation is associated with an increased risk of death.25
The single most cited scientific article from Framingham is published describing the “Framingham risk score”—an equation for calculating your 10-year risk of heart disease.26 This article has been cited ~150 more times than the average paper in the same field, ranking in the top 0.1% of all NIH-funded publications.I
i Using the NIH-developed metric called the relative citation ratio (RCR), Wilson et al., 1998, has an RCR value of 152. The RCR is a field-normalized metric that shows the scientific influence of one or more articles relative to the average NIH-funded paper. An RCR value of 152 indicates that the paper has been cited 152 times more than the average paper in its field and is in the top 99.9 percentile of papers in the field in terms of influence.
FRAMINGHAM ENTERS THE NEW
MILLENNIUM
2002 The Third Generation Cohort, which includes the grandchildren of the original participants, is added.5,27
2006
Framingham enters a new phase of data sharing, this time focused on making genetic data openly available to researchers.2,28 (See SHARe for more information)
2008
Framingham teams up with other epidemiological cohort studies to identify several risk genes for cardiovascular disease and many other conditions.29 These include hypertension, obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and more. (See the CHARGE Consortium for more information)
2013
Framingham joins the NIH’s Jackson Heart Study and the American Heart Association to form a new collaboration on cardiovascular population science: the Cardiovascular Genome-Phenome Study.30
2017
Whole genome sequencing is completed in 4,200 Framingham participants.31

IMPACTS BEFORE AND AFTER THE FRAMINGHAM HEART STUDY
THEN • Heart disease was
usually treated only after it affected health, such as after a heart attack.
• Heart disease became the leading cause of death by the early 1900s.1, 34
• The effects of smoking, cholesterol, and obesity on heart disease and stroke were not known.2
• High blood pressure was seen as an inevitable consequence of aging, and all but the most severe cases were untreated.36
• The term “longitudinal cohort study” did not exist in the 1940s, and epidemiological studies were conducted primarily on infectious diseases.32
In 1968, death rates from heart disease hit their peak, accounting
for nearly 750,000 American deaths.1
NOW • The concept of risk
factors has paved the way for preventive approaches to disease. People can take control of their personal health risks through lifestyle modifications and medical treatments.
• Hypertension treatment, cholesterol reduction, and smoking cessation have contributed to a 50-year decline in cardiovascular deaths.
• Framingham identified that the lifetime risk of hypertension was 90%. Blood pressure and cholesterol issues are among the top 10 reasons people visit their doctor.35
• Inspired by Framingham and other early studies, there are now hundreds of longitudinal cohort studies conducted worldwide, and epidemiologic tools are now commonly used to understand chronic conditions.37
From 1969 to 2013, U.S. deaths
from heart disease fell 67.5% and
deaths from stroke fell 77%.33
HEALTH • Death rates from heart disease and stroke have
dropped dramatically since their peak in the late 1960s (see Figure 1), with approximately half of the decline in heart disease deaths due to reductions in the burden of risk factors (e.g., smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure) through lifestyle and medications.38
• The concept of cardiovascular disease risk factors has become an integral part of the modern medical curriculum and has led to the development of effective treatment and preventive strategies in clinical practice.
• The Merck Manual’s Centennial Edition listed Framingham as fourth among the 100 most significant advances in 20th-century medicine, behind only the development of antibiotics, mass immunization, and the discovery of vitamins.39
Age-Adjusted Death Rates for Coronary Heart Disease
Figure 1: The age-adjusted death rates for coronary heart disease (CHD) have been dropping steadily since 1968. If they had remained at the 1968 peak levels, more than 1 million more heart disease deaths would have occurred by 2014. Source: National Vital Statistics Reports, CDC National Center for Health Statistics.40

SOCIETY • Increased U.S. life expectancy due to
progress against heart disease from 1970 to 2000 has added an estimated $1.6 trillion per year to national wealth.42
• About 90% of the observed gains in U.S. life expectancy have been credited to declines in the rates of death in infancy and from cardiovascular disease.43
• Unusual for the time, more than half of the original Framingham cohort were women. Because of this, we now appreciate that heart disease is not just a man’s disease, as many originally thought.
KNOWLEDGE • Findings from Framingham have informed
our understanding of how cardiovascular health affects the rest of the body, especially how changes in blood flow to the brain can affect cognitive and neurological conditions.
• As of 2017, more than 3,500 articles based on Framingham research have been published since 1950 (Figure 2). While many publications are focused on cardiovascular disease, Framingham has also informed our understanding of obesity, diabetes, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, osteoporosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and even cancer.44
• The success of Framingham made it a model for later prospective cohort studies, and epidemiologic tools and methodologies first developed by Framingham scientists are now commonly applied to understand chronic disease.
• Framingham led the way in scientific data sharing, from early data tables that were made freely available to other researchers in the 1960s13 to the wealth of genetic information available today in the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP) and phenotype data in the NHLBI Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Information Coordinating Center (BioLINCC).45 Investigators may also apply directly to the Framingham Heart Study to propose ancillary studies and access biospecimens.46
Figure 2: The number of publications coming from the Framingham Heart Study has risen dramatically every decade since the 1950s, demonstrating the study’s ongoing and ever-increasing contributions to scientific and medical knowledge.
THE FRAMINGHAM RISK SCORE The statistical methods developed by Framingham investigators allowed for better estimation of the effects of risk factors on the development of a complex chronic disease.41 In 1998, in the most cited paper in Framingham history, this community- based epidemiologic information was then applied in order to predict an individual’s 10-year risk of coronary heart disease, taking into account age, sex, smoking, diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. The Framingham risk calculator, which in many ways changed the practice of medicine, has been refined over the years to include other risk factors, and a suite of additional risk calculators based on Framingham research are now available for heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, claudication (exercise-induced leg cramping), stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, and more. Risk calculators tailored to different populations have also been developed.40
FRAMINGHAM INTO THE FUTURE Despite progress against heart disease and stroke, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S. and globally.47 Thanks to Framingham and other studies, we now know that most cardiovascular disease is caused by modifiable risk factors like smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol levels, and physical inactivity. As America faces a rising burden of chronic disease, Framingham has provided key insights into combatting them, equipping researchers and clinicians with a better understanding of how risk factors contribute to the development of such diseases. The Framingham Heart Study continues to lead cutting-edge research areas such as genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic biomarkers of cardiovascular disease risk, vascular stiffness, gut microbiome, and cardiopulmonary exercise testing, among others. Even as the Framingham Heart Study turns 70 years old, lessons learned, both old and new, continue to inform not only the way we study health and disease, but also our understanding of who is vulnerable to chronic diseases and why.
For references, supplementary information, and more on the impact of NIH, please visit http://www.nih.gov/impact