Tools You Can Use

Get tips for improving high blood pressure control—Health care professionals can get evidence—and practice-based advice on improving care delivery, medication adherence, and patient reminders from Hypertension Control: Actions Steps for Clinicians. The newest Million Hearts^® Action Guide includes easy-to-read tables plus links to online resources and a complete reference list.
Use electronic health records to improve quality of care and reduce high blood pressure—Check out these on-demand webinars from the Health Resources and Services Administration that describe how to leverage your electronic health records system to create problem lists, monitor progress, and engage patients in their care.
Check out the Measure Up/Pressure Down^™ (MUPD) Provider Toolkit for health care professionals —Practices and systems share their proven techniques for helping their patients get blood pressure under control. Choose the tools you need, including how to accurately measure blood pressure, evidence-based guidelines for treatment and monitoring, methods for identifying patients with high blood pressure, and patient engagement and self-management materials.
Join MUPD Town Hall webinars about the recently released cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines—The webinars, scheduled from 3:00–4:30 p.m. (ET) on Friday, February 14, and Tuesday, February 18, will highlight the current state of guidelines, review the recently released guidelines, offer a forum for participating medical groups to share their current activities, and discuss implications for the MUPD campaign.
Understand coverage of high blood pressure drugs under state Medicaid fee for service plans—Does your state require co-pays, cap the number of prescriptions per month, or use preferred drug lists to limit access to certain drugs? This fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes maps showing how practices differ across states and offers suggestions for improving access through techniques such as prior authorizations.
Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health—Since the release of the first report in 1964, another 30 Surgeon General’s reports have increased our understanding of the devastating health and financial effects of tobacco use. Visitwww.surgeongeneral.gov/initiatives/tobacco for the latest updates as well as resources to help smokers quit and rapidly reduce preventable heart attacks and strokes.

Million Hearts^® in the Community

CommunityRx helps doctors connect patients with local self-care services. Chicagoans are some of the first to leave the doctor’s office with an e-prescription that includes a map and list of health and social resources in the community tailored to their individual needs. Since April 2013, doctors have used HealtheRx to generate more than 30,000 personalized e-prescriptions for their patients. The CommunityRx project was funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services through the Affordable Care Act, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides technical support.
The Association for State and Territorial Health Officials showcases collaborations between public health and health care. Learn how New York’s Department of Health is working with a state quality improvement organization to enhance performance on the ABCS of heart health; Ohio’s Department of Health collaborated with the state Academy of Family Practitioners to address high blood pressure and cholesterol among African American men; and Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene worked with a broad base of partners to improve clinical care and workplace wellness, encourage healthy diets, tackle tobacco control, and provide incentives for greater public health action at the community level.

Let us know what you're doing to advance Million Hearts^® in your community! Send us a short description with some key points, and we may feature you in a future e-Update!