COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – The Ohio State University is working with national partners to encourage heart healthy lifestyles and hopefully save lives.

The Million Hearts Initiative is trying to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes by 2027. It is co-led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

“The time to begin to learn about your heart risk is early, actually the earlier the better,” said Dr. Lawrence Sperling, Executive Director of the Million Hearts Initiative.

Part of the prevention efforts include screenings.

“They did your BMI and then your, they took your blood pressure, and they kind of explained what it all meant to you,” said Aleena Shaikh, a student at OSU.

She recently got screened at an event on campus.

“I know as college students you can get pretty stressed so that’s not good for your heart obviously, so you have to keep doing things that’ll keep you healthy,” Shaikh said.

OSU’s Colleges of Nursing, Medicine, and Pharmacy created the Million Hearts Fellowship. It’s an online program to help other organizations and universities nationwide complete screenings for the initiative. As of this week, more than 100,000 screenings have taken place.

“Know your numbers and today can be your Jan. 1,” said Dr. Bernadette Melnyk, Vice President for Health Promotion and Chief Wellness Officer at OSU.

Those working with the initiative and fellowship encouraged people to make heart healthy lifestyle choices.

“So this is really what our population needs as a whole, is just earlier screening, earlier diagnosis, earlier education,” said Kate Gawlik, Associate Professor of Clinical Nursing at OSU’s College of Nursing.