WSC 2025 | Strategies and approaches for global implementation of potassium-enriched salt for stroke prevention

It’s really a multifaceted strategy to switch the world’s salt supply to potassium-rich salt for cardiovascular disease prevention. So that involves co-developing strategies with diverse stakeholders, whether it’s governments, NGOs, academics, food industry. The second is around trying to get the healthcare system and healthcare professionals to recommend potassium-rich salt to people with high blood pressure. So that’s engaging GPs, cardiologists, nephrologists, dietitians, nurses, and so on to get them to recommend the switch to potassium-rich salt for hypertension and blood pressure lowering. And then the third strategy is around engaging the wider population because most of the population eat too much sodium in the form of salt and too little potassium which is a mineral that’s found in fruit and vegetables and most of us don’t eat enough of it. So making the switch in the whole population is really important so we want to promote potassium-rich salt amongst the population because most people haven’t heard of it and we want to tell them about the benefits and tell them how reducing sodium is really important for reducing blood pressure but also increasing potassium is also important for reducing blood pressure. And then the fourth strategy is around engaging the food industry to strengthen the potassium-rich salt supply chain and that’s to ensure we improve the affordability as well as the accessibility of potassium-rich salt so anyone can access it at low cost and it’s widely available for everyone. So that’s really important to engage retailers, supermarkets, pharmacies to make sure they stock the potassium-rich salt product so many people can access it. It also involves engaging food producers, chefs, fast food chains to make the switch in their products so that people are consuming less regular salt and more potassium-enriched salt for better heart health. And then the final strategy is around engaging governments to ensure they establish policies that sort of support widespread implementation of potassium-rich salts. In Australia, for example, we have a mandatory policy that all salt used in bread should be iodized salt. Similarly, we want a policy whereby they mandate all salt being iodized, but also potassium-enriched. And that’s how you get it to the whole population. 124 countries worldwide currently have a mandatory salt iodization policy. So similarly, we can have policies that support the switch to potassium-enriched iodized salt. So those are some implementation strategies for how we can scale up potassium-rich salt substitution for better heart health as well as to prevent strokes.

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