Learn From a Champion: Small Clinic Makes Big Difference in Heart Health

In This Issue Tools You Can Use Million Hearts® in the Community The Science of Million Hearts® Director's Message Do This! Quick Fact Connect with us MillionHearts @MillionHeartsUS

Tools You Can Use Check out our short new video on how medication nonadherence affects your patients, and how to address it—Share this video with colleagues to spread the word about how nonadherence increases the risk for heart disease and stroke. Educate your patients, too, with this video created especially for them. Track air quality in your area, explore hazard data, and learn about the health effects of poor air quality—Be Air Aware for Air Quality Awareness Week (May 1–5) and beyond with this web section from CDC, where you can map air quality down to the county level and learn how several health conditions—including cardiovascular disease—are tied to air pollution. Explore CDC's new Sodium Reduction Toolkit on building partnerships with food service vendors—In honor of World Salt Awareness Week (March 20–26), this toolkit helps public health practitioners build effective strategies to tackle the source of Americans’ excess sodium consumption: pre-packaged and processed foods. Get your physical activity on track—The free USDA Physical Activity Tracker lets you chart daily exercises, log your calories, and aim for nutrition targets. Cardiologists: Understand how to participate in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)—This new fact sheet from The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services lists some measures and activities that cardiologists can select based on their clinical practice and explains how the Medicare payment adjustment is scored based on four MIPS categories. Million Hearts® in the Community Community health centers improve detection and diagnosis of high blood pressure using Million Hearts® quality improvement strategies. The 2-year cooperative agreement with the National Association of Community Health Centers helped 11 federally qualified health centers collectively improve their blood pressure control rates by an average of 8.7%. Stay up to date on the latest health IT information from Million Hearts®. Get support on managing your patients’ data securely and efficiently with the EHR Optimization Guide. Podcast: New tools and protocols on the Million Hearts®website explore cholesterol management and calculate atherosclerotic disease risk. Listen to the latest episode of The Download podcast for more about these important resources. The Science of Million Hearts® Report highlights the top sources of sodium in Americans’ diets. The daily mean sodium intake was about 1.5 times higher than recommended, and men had considerably higher sodium intake than women. Obesity and lack of physical activity are challenging Americans’ heart health. February’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from CDC outlines some troubling statistics on these major contributors to heart disease and heart attacks, along with ways to encourage patients to change their behaviors. Research Letter: Younger patients who need statins may not be getting them. Less than half of patients younger than 40 who had low-density lipoprotein levels above 190 mg/dL were prescribed a statin, JAMA Cardiology reports. Submit your papers for a special issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. JABFM is seeking research papers on advances in primary care strategies, especially methods that support the use of patient-centered models of care and interventions in diverse practice settings and populations. The deadline is July 5, 2017. Meta-analysis quantifies the dose-response relationship between physical activity and hypertension. Researchers mapping the linear relationship between levels of physical activity and the risk for high blood pressure, found that there was no cutoff for benefits to be achieved. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of Americans, even though it is largely preventable. But did you know that some populations are at greater risk than others? For example, almost half of African Americans and blacks have some form of cardiovascular disease (CVD), due in large part to having higher rates of hypertension. Effective approaches to reduce this disparity exist, but are not yet being widely implemented. A key Million Hearts® 2022 priority aims to change that by starting with data that show a difference in CVD outcomes, adding the interventions that work, and connecting these with partners who are poised to make a difference to improve outcomes in priority populations. Join us in focusing action on priority populations during April, National Minority Health Month. Just look at Zufall Health, a community health center in New Jersey that achieved a blood pressure control rate for more than two-thirds of its patient population, making it a Million Hearts®2015 Hypertension Control Champion. Zufall serves a highly diverse patient population of many races, ethnicities, cultures, and income levels—finding success through forming relationships with patients, building trust, and using evidence-based protocols. Learn more about Zufall’s recipe for success and what previous Champions have done to reach the target blood pressure control rate. By working together to tackle the conditions that lead to CVD, we can win the battle—one heart and mind at a time. —Janet Wright, MD, FACCExecutive Director, Million Hearts® Do This! Become the Next Million Hearts® Champion We have learned so much from our previous champions, who consistently hit home runs on hypertension control rates. Is your practice at 70% hypertension control or better, or do you know practices that are? Apply between now and June 2, 2017 to be the next Million Hearts® Hypertension Control Champion! Your success story needs to be told, and could be featured in future Million Hearts® materials! Quick Fact Just 60% of African American and Hispanic adolescents live in neighborhoods that support physical activity, compared with 67% of whites. Only about 1 in 4 adolescents meet the aerobic physical activity guidelines of 60 minutes a day. Back to top ^