Objective: to identify the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and self-assessment of knowledge about the prevention of the disease and the promotion of health in students of the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB), 2016. Methods: a descriptive prevalence type study was carried out through surveys that evaluated the sociodemographic variables and the questionnaire Healthy Doctor = Healthy Patient. Results: 347 out of 527 students were surveyed, where the average age was 20.3 ± 2.38 years, and 236 students (68.01%) were female. 50% qualified their daily physical activity as “average”, which was of greater intensity in the basic levels (p value 0.40). Alcohol consumption was 50%, which was increased in clinical-level students with statistically significant differences (p value <0.01) The majority of students were non-smoking (93.3%), without differences between basic and clinical-level students (p value = 0.07). Regarding the survey of basic knowledge in prevention and promotion, results were low regarding nutrition; the best performance was obtained in smoking. Conclusions: At the Faculty of Medicine of the UPB, sedentary lifestyle was the main cardiovascular risk factor in basic-level students, while alcohol consumption was the main risk factor for clinical-level students. In addition, it was demonstrated that tobacco consumption is not a prevalent habit, without significant difference between the university levels. This coincides with the result of the survey of knowledge on health promotion and prevention of cardiovascular disease, where students demonstrated greater knowledge about smoking as a cardiovascular risk factor.