As I look out the window of the room in my home in which I have been working for over a year, it is hard to believe how green the trees have become! But Spring is truly here, and if it’s May, it must be Stroke Awareness Month. Over the past decade, NIH and its government, nonprofit, and hospital partners and scientists and health care providers around the country have worked to make people everywhere aware of the risks and dangers of stroke; help people lower their blood pressure and cholesterol; design and test better drugs and devices to treat heart rhythm disturbances and prevent the blood clots they cause; and implement methods for dissolving or pulling out clots in blood vessels in the brain. Accordingly, age-adjusted stroke rates and death rates from stroke have decreased over the past decade in both men and women and for all races and ethnicities. But lest we think we don’t have to worry about stroke anymore, we still have lots of work to do!
