American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 and Risk of Venous Thromboembolism: The Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study

health (CVH) toward a 2020 goal for improvement. The metric includes body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, physical activity (PA), cigarette smoking, and diet. We hypothesized a lower risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) with favorable Life’s Simple 7 scores. Methods and Results-—REGARDS recruited 30 239 black and white participants ≥45 years of age across the United States in 2003–2007. A 14-point summary score for Life’s Simple 7 classified participants into inadequate (0 to 4 points), average (5 to 9 points), and optimal (10 to 14 points) categories. Hazard ratios (HRs) of incident VTE were calculated for these categories, adjusting for age, sex, race, income, education, and region of residence. For comparison, HRs of VTE were calculated using the Framingham 10-year coronary risk score. There were 263 incident VTE cases over 5.0 years of follow-up; incidence rates per 1000 person-years declined from 2.9 (95 % confidence interval [CI], 2.3 to 3.7) among those in the inadequate category to 1.8 (95 % CI