Health care professionals can access a variety of tools, resources, and training materials to develop and support programs that focus on prevention and treatment of heart disease.
Guidelines and Recommendations
American Heart Association Guidelines and Statements
The American Heart Association (AHA) publishes medical guidelines for heart disease and stroke, offers access to related resources, statistics, and news, as well as Circulation, the peer-reviewed journal related to cardiovascular health and disease. Visit AHA’s Guidelines and Statements website to learn more.
The Community Guide
The Guide to Community Preventive Services, known as “The Community Guide,” is a resource that collects and communicates evidence-based findings from the Community Preventive Services Task Force. The Community Guide helps health care professionals identify and select interventions that are proven to be effective. See the Task Force’s findings for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention here.
The Surgeon General’s Call to Action for Hypertension
In 2020, the Surgeon General published a Call to Action for Hypertension, which seeks to improve health outcomes related to hypertension by identifying evidence-based interventions that can be used across the United States. Download the Call to Action full report and executive summary by clicking on the links, or visit the Centers for Disease Control’s High Blood Pressure pages to find more resources.
Tools, Protocols, and Additional Resources
National Hypertension Control Initiative
Community Health Center Hub
CDC Resources
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed educational materials on heart disease for patients and tools, training kits, and journal articles for professionals. For more information, visit CDC’s webpage Resources for Health Professionals.
Million Hearts® 2027
Million Hearts® is a national initiative co-led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) with the goal of preventing one million preventable cardiovascular events in the next five years. They have developed tools to enhance your contributions to heart disease and stroke prevention, which can be found on their Tools & Protocols website.
National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) Resources
In an effort to support the Million Hearts® initiative, NACHC developed additional resources specifically for statin therapy, improving blood pressure control for African Americans, self-measured blood pressure monitoring programs and much more. These resources can be found on the NACHC website here.
