Advances in cardiovascular disease prevention are often hailed as one of the major public health accomplishments of the past 50 years. The progress achieved is rooted in efforts challenging the inevitability of vascular events, which led to the discovery of modifiable risk factors and systematic approaches to prevent population exposure. These prevention efforts have led to steep reductions in premature vascular mortality and morbidity in many parts of the world since the 1960s.^1–3 However, this downward trend seems to have reached a plateau or even reversed in several high-income countries.^3–6 This trend also appears to be true for cardiovascular morbidity, with little change in the number of individuals newly diagnosed with cardiovascular disease since the mid-2000s even when accounting for population ageing.⁷ A rise in the prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease is thought to underpin these unfavourable trends.