Worried about Your Heart Disease Risk? The PREVENT Tool May Help
If you’ve ever wondered what your heart health will look like decades from now, there’s a free tool that can help answer that question. PREVENT is an online cardiovascular risk calculator developed by the American Heart Association (AHA) that estimates your 10- and 30-year risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure—based on health numbers you may already know.
Since its debut in 2023, PREVENT has been gradually incorporated into routine care. New blood pressure guidelines in 2025 and cholesterol guidelines in 2026 both include the tool as part of standard risk assessment, making it likely that your doctor will bring it up at a future visit.
“PREVENT is a starting point for talking about those bread-and-butter risk factors that each individual needs to consider,” says Kamil Faridi, MD, a Yale Medicine cardiologist. The ability to predict risk decades ahead, he says, can empower people to make lifestyle changes or start medications before problems develop.
Who should use PREVENT?
The 2026 cholesterol guidelines from the American Heart Association and 10 other professional organizations recommend that even those who have no existing heart disease can and should assess their future cardiovascular risk starting at age 30 using the PREVENT equations.
“This will represent a huge portion of the U.S. population,” says Dr. Faridi.
PREVENT is designed for adults ages 30 to 79 who have not already been diagnosed with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease—meaning no prior history of heart attack, stroke, coronary stent, coronary bypass surgery, or peripheral vascular disease.
How does PREVENT work?
PREVENT is free to use through the AHA website, though the AHA emphasizes it is meant to be used alongside medical guidance, not as a substitute for it.
To complete the assessment, you will need to know several health numbers. The tool asks about:
- Total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol levels
- Blood pressure
- Blood sugar or diabetes history
- Body mass index (BMI)
- Smoking status
- Whether you take blood pressure or cholesterol medications
- Kidney function
Additional optional inputs—including zip code and other social factors—may improve the accuracy of your estimate.
Once you enter your information, PREVENT generates a percentage-based estimate for the risk of developing heart disease in the next 10 or 30 years.
What makes PREVENT more accurate than older risk calculators?
PREVENT is based on data from 6.5 million people, as described in a 2025 research article published in the journal Circulation. It improves on earlier heart-risk tools in several meaningful ways:
- It predicts and includes heart failure, not just heart attack and stroke like older risk tools
- It incorporates kidney function, which has historically been underappreciated as a cardiovascular risk factor
- It uses more current population data, reducing the tendency of older tools to misestimate risk in certain groups
- It is not race-based, instead using broader health and social measures—including zip code—to help improve accuracy across diverse populations
“Older tools and equations set some limitations that resulted in misestimating risk in certain demographic groups, in particular, certain racial or ethnic groups,” Dr. Faridi says.
The inclusion of kidney function is a significant advance. “Kidney function has long been underappreciated as a significant and substantial risk factor for heart disease,” Dr. Faridi says.
Is there a version specifically for younger adults?
Yes. The PREVENT equations can be used to predict risks of cardiovascular disease for adults beginning at age 30. For adults between the ages of 30 and 59, 30-year risks can even be estimated.
Researchers at Northwestern University also published a related tool in 2025 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Designed for adults ages 30 to 59, it uses the PREVENT equations but adds a feature that shows users their percentile rank compared to 100 peers of the same age and sex—giving a more intuitive sense of relative risk.
The developers hope this peer comparison will motivate younger adults to make heart-healthy changes—or, where appropriate, consider preventive medications earlier.
I’m young and feel fine. Why does my 30-year risk matter now?
Many adults under 55 already have modifiable risk factors—high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, obesity, or smoking—that can be addressed with lifestyle changes and, in some cases, medication. The longer these go unaddressed, the greater the cumulative damage.
“We know that most cardiovascular chronic diseases develop over decades,” Dr. Faridi says. “That’s why 30-year risk estimates are so important—and why these conversations should start earlier than many people think, even in young adulthood.”
Research shows that prolonged exposure to elevated LDL cholesterol (often called “bad cholesterol” because it contributes to plaque buildup in artery walls) and insulin resistance increases long-term heart risk significantly. “The earlier those risks are identified, the more opportunity there is to change their trajectory,” Dr. Faridi says.
What should I do if my PREVENT score is high?
Start by talking to your primary care doctor or a cardiologist. A high score is not a diagnosis—it is a signal that warrants a closer look.
Depending on your results, your doctor may recommend therapies that can reduce the chance of developing heart disease, including medications for blood pressure or high cholesterol. In certain cases, a coronary artery calcium (CAC) scan, an imaging test that detects calcium deposits in the arteries as an early sign of heart disease, may be discussed. Beyond a standard cholesterol panel, all adults should also have lipoprotein(a)—a genetically inherited form of LDL—measured at least once to determine if they have increased heart disease risk not fully captured by the PREVENT equations.
It’s also worth remembering healthy behaviors that PREVENT doesn’t measure. Daily habits—eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, staying physically active, managing stress, and getting adequate sleep—matter for heart health in ways no calculator can fully capture.
“PREVENT gives us a number we can use to guide decisions before someone develops heart disease,” Dr. Faridi says. “The goal is to spot risk earlier, when we still have time to make a meaningful difference.”
