Abstract P318: Life’s Essential 8 as a Measure of Cardiovascular Health in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI)

Introduction: In 2022, the American Heart Association (AHA) introduced Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) as an updated definition of cardiovascular health (CVH). Sleep health was added to the original Life’s Simple 7 (LS7), and a new scoring system was developed. We evaluated how LE8 characterizes CVH among women in the WHI. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that the average LE8 score would be moderate, with only a small group of WHI participants having high CVH. Methods: The WHI recruited 161,808 post-menopausal women from 40 clinical centers in 1993-1998. This analysis included 116,514 women without self-reported CVD, with measured height, weight, and blood pressure, and self-reported smoking history, sleep duration, physical activity, diet, diabetes, and cholesterol at baseline. CVH components were scored from 0-100 based on participants’ achievement of each health factor or behavior. Scores were assigned per AHA guidance with some adaptations made based on data availability. Lacking measured values, glucose and lipid scores were calculated based on history and treatment status of diabetes and high cholesterol. Overall LE8 scores were calculated as the unweighted mean of all components. Scores were further categorized into high (80-100), moderate (50-79), or low (0-49), with higher scores indicating positive CVH. Results: The average LE8 score among WHI participants at baseline was 71.5 (standard deviation (SD): 12.5; range 20.6-100) ( Figure ). Overall, sleep scores were high (mean: 86.5, SD 19.1). The lowest scores were found in diet (mean: 39.5, SD 31.3) and physical activity (mean: 47.7, SD: 43.5). LE8 classified 28.1% of WHI participants (32,773/116,514) as having high CVH whereas a prior analysis of LS7 found that 17.7% and 6.1% had ideal levels of 5 and 6-7 CVH components, respectively. Conclusions: Based on the new LE8 definition, most women had moderate CVH at study baseline, with approximately a quarter having high CVH. Although sleep health was high, scores for other health behaviors demonstrated considerable room for improvement.