Best Practices for Heart Disease and Stroke: A Guide to Effective Approaches and Strategies
Best Practices for Heart Disease and Stroke: A Guide to Effective Approaches and Strategies aims to inform decision making by translating complex evidence into specific public health actions that end users can take to address heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular conditions within their own practice and communities.
This guide serves as a resource for
- State and local health departments.
- Decision makers.
- Public health professionals.
- Clinicians.
- Other individuals with an interest in implementing effective public health strategies to improve cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health.
The 18 strategies that are highlighted in this Guide were carefully reviewed and selected through a process that is described in the full PDF version of Best Practices for Heart Disease and Stroke: A Guide to Effective Approaches and Strategies.
Strategies Included in the Best Practices Guide
The strategies included in Best Practices for Heart Disease and Stroke: A Guide to Effective Approaches and Strategies were selected based on a rigorous review process.
The guide’s strategies are grouped by commonalities they share in action and serve as overarching approaches public health practitioners can take to prevent and manage heart disease and stroke.
Read more, below, about the 18 strategies included in the guide. Asterisks indicate new strategies that were incorporated in this version of the guide.
These strategies explore aspects of the medical care provided following a cardiovascular or cerebrovascular event.
Cardiac Rehabilitation to Support Recovery From Cardiac Events*
Emergency Medical Service Systems for Stroke Treatment*
Public Access Defibrillation*
Stroke Center Certification*
These strategies explore activities and approaches for promoting cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health.
Reducing Sodium to Prevent and Manage Hypertension*
Workplace Health Promotion to Prevent and Manage Heart Disease and Stroke*
These strategies utilize technology to inform clinical decision making to support patients in maintaining their cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health.
Clinical Decision Support Systems
Telehealth*
These strategies leverage and combine different sectors of the health workforce to provide high-quality care to prevent and/or manage complications from heart disease and stroke.
Community Health Workers
Community Paramedicine*
Collaborative Drug Therapy Management
Community Pharmacists and Medication Therapy Management
Tailored Pharmacy-Based Interventions to Improve Medication Adherence*
Team-Based Care to Improve High Blood Pressure Control
These strategies enable patients to better manage their conditions by expanding access to medical care and through support, counseling, tools, and education.
Lifestyle Modification Programs to Control Hypertension*
Reducing Out-of-Pocket Costs for Medications
Self-Management Support and Education
Self-Measured Blood Pressure Monitoring With Clinical Support
*Indicates new strategies that were incorporated in this version of the guide.
Heart Disease and Stroke Best Practices Clearinghouse
The Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention launched the Best Practices Clearinghouse, a website designed to organize best practices resources that will aid in improving heart disease and stroke prevention as well as reducing health disparities.
The purpose of the Best Practices Clearinghouse is to provide a centralized, sustainable system to national, state, local, and tribal public health leaders with a tool to access information and the ability to index and easily search for available resources.
By providing better linkages between topics and the breadth of resources within the comprehensive Best Practices Clearinghouse, health systems and community organizations can make changes to eliminate barriers to quality care and improve the health of many people.
Peer Review Process
The National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion requires that external subject matter experts peer-review certain documents.
External peer review increases the quality and credibility of documents the federal government distributes to the scientific community and the public. Further information is available in the CDC/ATSDR Peer Review Agenda.
Read the Influential Scientific Information (ISI) [PDF – 311 KB] review of Best Practices for Heart Disease and Stroke: A Guide to Effective Approaches and Strategies.
Suggested Citation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Best Practices for Heart Disease and Stroke: A Guide to Effective Approaches and Strategies; 2022. doi:10.15620/cdc:122290
