GLOBAL CORONARY HEART DISEASE (S. VIRANI AND S. NADERI, SECTION EDITORS) Overview of Coronary Heart Disease Risk Initiatives in South Asia Ankur Kalra 1,2,3,4 & Deepak L. Bhatt 5 & Sanjay Rajagopalan 6 & Kunal Suri 1 & Sundeep Mishra 7 & Romaina Iqbal 8 & Salim S. Virani 9,10 # Springer Science+Business Media New York (outside the USA) 2017 Abstract Purpose of Review Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is now the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Industrialization and economic growth have led to an unprec- edented increment in the burden of CVD and their risk factors in less industrialized regions of the world. While there are abundant data on CVD and their risk factors from longitudinal cohort studies done in the West, good-quality data from South Asia are lacking. Recent Findings Several multi-institutional, observational, prospective registries, and epidemiologic cohorts in South Asia have been established to systematically evaluate the bur- den of CVD and their risk factors. The PINNACLE (Practice Innovation and Clinical Excellence) India Quality Improvement Program (PIQIP), the Kerala Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS), and Trivandrum Heart Failure registries have focused on secondary prevention of CVD and perfor- mance measurement in both outpatient and inpatient settings, respectively. The Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology (PURE), Centre for Cardiometabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia (CARRS), and other epidemiologic and genetic studies have focused on primary prevention of CVD and evaluated variables such as environment, smoking, physical activity, health systems, food and nutrition policy, dietary consumption patterns, socioeconomic factors, and healthy neighborhoods. Summary The international cardiovascular community has been responsive to a burgeoning cardiovascular disease bur- den in South Asia. Several collaborations have formed be- tween the West (North America in particular) and South Asia to catalyze evidence-based and data-driven changes in the federal health policy in this part of the world to promote cardiovascular health and mitigate cardiovascular risk. Keywords Cardiovascular care . India . CARRS . PIQIP . PURE . Kerala This article is part of the Topical Collection on Global Coronary Heart Disease * Salim S. Virani virani@bcm.edu 1 Kalra Hospital SRCNC (Sri Ram Cardio-Thoracic and Neurosciences Centre) Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India 2 Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX, USA 3 Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA 4 Safety, Quality, Informatics and Leadership, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 5 Brigham and Women’ s Hospital Heart & Vascular Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 6 Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center; Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA 7 All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India 8 Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan 9 Health Policy, Quality & Informatics Program, Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center Health Services Research and Development Center for Innovations, 2002 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX 77030, USA 10 Section of Cardiovascular Research, Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA Curr Atheroscler Rep (2017) 19:25 DOI 10.1007/s11883-017-0662-1