During American Heart Month this February, pharmacists can continue to educate their patients on the importance of preventing heart disease and controlling hypertension. That involves in-store consultation and answering your patients’ medication questions by phone, in-person and online. We’ve compiled a few resources to help you and your pharmacy team provide quality educational information from trusted government sources.
To help spread the word, the NIH launched their #OurHearts initiative which offers an interactive map for patients sharing social media, the ability to upload local events, and an outreach toolkit that pharmacies should utilize. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/education-and-awareness/heart-month
If your pharmacy is having an in-store heart health event, the outreach toolkit provides fact sheets, powerpoint slides and flyers. You could even submit your event: https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/education-and-awareness/heart-truth/our-hearts. For online promotion, the toolkit offers: social media resources, animated gifs and state-based infocards.
Another great source to check out is the CDC’s American Heart Month 2021 page. https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/american_heart_month.htm . They offer hypertension toolkits for clinicians, public health professionals and patients. You also get access to social messages for professionals, online quizzes you can link to, and hypertension maps and data sources.
Nutritionists can also reference https://www.myplate.gov/ for heart health food planning.
The Office on Women’s Health has also compiled some heart disease and stroke information at https://www.womenshealth.gov/heart-disease-and-stroke
Finally, you can learn more about the Million Hearts 2022 national initiative to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes within 5 years. https://millionhearts.hhs.gov/
This website offers priority topics on COVD-19, cholesterol management, tobacco use and clinical tools related to smoking cessation, cardiac rehabilitation change, and hypertension control.
By equipping care teams with the proper educational tools, patients can improve their cardiovascular medication adherence and blood pressure control.
