BIA Supports Heart Foundation this December

Throughout the year, Berkley Insurance Australia is proud to partner with some of Australia’s most inspiring and hardworking research and charity organisations.

This year we’ve been proud to support the important work that Dementia Australia are doing, as well as the pioneering research being done by the only specialist research project into paediatric brain cancer.

We are proud to announce that we will be donating $1 to The Heart Foundation for every Open Market policy bound in December 2022 to support their vision of an Australia free of heart disease.

We know that charities and research organisations do ‘good work’ but often we might not appreciate the details of what they do.

So, we’ve put together a short explainer on some of the things we’ve learned about The Heart Foundation and the impact they have on the lives of Australians.

Where do funds donated go? 

For any charity, the key question is where funds donated go. There are thousands of registered charities in Australia, and they are run with varying degrees of efficiency. An efficient charity keeps its running costs low. Running costs include things like staff salary and building expenses (rent, utilities, etc.).

Lower running costs naturally mean that the majority of funds donated make their way to the ‘end beneficiaries’ of the charity: direct support to those it is meant to help, research and programs.

The Heart Foundation is over 60 years old and has a good reputation in the not for profit sector.

For every $100 donated:

• $45 goes to the fight against heart disease. This includes public education and health programs.
• $21 goes to life-saving research and grants.
• $20 is invested into ongoing fundraising operations.
• $13 goes to administrative costs like communications, salary and other expenses.

Where can we see the impact of The Heart Foundation?

With a 60-year history, The Heart Foundation has a long history of impact. Perhaps the most attention-grabbing number for us (we are data-focused after all!) was the staggering $670 million that has been invested in research by The Heart Foundation over its lifetime.

That money is spent in support of the mission of The Heart Foundation which is to improve heart health and quality of life of all Australians through three key areas:

1. Risk reduction
2. Support, and,
3. Care and research.

What does ‘research’ actually involve?

The $670 million of funds are disbursed to Australian researchers to assist in a better understanding of heart disease along its entire ‘life cycle’.

Like most health conditions, there is likely to never be a single ‘cure’ for heart disease. It’s complex and has many causes. That’s why incremental, consistent research is so important.

One large destination for the money spent on research is to better understand the incidence and causes of heart disease – in effect, why does it happen? And modern techniques let researchers examine an even more interesting question: why does it happen to some people, but not others who are similar to them?

In turn, that can fund ongoing programs that look at trialling and testing different evidence-based strategies to lower those occurrences of heart disease and to prevent early onset.

For those that do suffer one of the many types of heart disease, the research pathway includes looking at how to prevent the re-occurrence of the disease. It also looks at testing and tailoring management strategies so those with ongoing heart disease can live a full and happy life.

Other tranches of funding go into looking into innovative ways of identifying heart disease early, from isolating changes in markers in our blood to testing the use of heart rate monitors in smart devices to survey for anomalies that could help a GP to spot any early warning signs for their patients.

If you would like to learn more about The Heart Foundation or support their work directly, you can do so here.

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