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Purpose of Review Behavioral economics represents a promising set of principles to inform the design of health-promoting interventions. Techniques from the field have the potential to increase quality of cardiovascular care given suboptimal rates of guideline-directed care delivery and patient adherence to optimal health behaviors across the spectrum of cardiovascular care delivery. Recent Findings Cardiovascular health-promoting interventions have demonstrated success in using a wide array of principles from behavioral economics, including loss framing, social norms, and gamification. Such approaches are becoming increasingly sophisticated and focused on clinical cardiovascular outcomes in addition to health behaviors as a primary endpoint. Many approaches can be used to improve patient decisions remotely, which is particularly useful given the shift to virtual care in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Summary Numerous applications for behavioral economics exist in the cardiovascular care delivery space, though more work is needed before we will have a full understanding of ways to best leverage such applications in each clinical context.

Purpose of review In this review, we synthesise recent research on the association between loneliness and cardiovascular disease (CVD). We present evidence for mechanisms underlying this association and propose directions for future research. Recent findings Loneliness is related to increased risk of early mortality and CVD comparable to other well-established risk factors such as obesity or smoking. Summary Loneliness has been linked to higher rates of incident CVD, poorer CVD patient outcomes, and early mortality from CVD. Loneliness likely affects risk for these outcomes via health-related behaviours (e.g. physical inactivity and smoking), biological mechanisms (e.g. inflammation, stress reactivity), and psychological factors (e.g. depression) to indirectly damage health.