Three Steps to a Healthy Heart Community: A Toolkit for Change through Collective Action

A Toolkit to Help Your Community Implement the CDC 6|18 Initiative Hypertension Control Strategies

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and stroke is the
fifth. A key risk factor for heart disease and stroke is hypertension, or high blood pressure. Nearly half of all American adults, 108 million people, have hypertension, but only about 1 in 4 have their condition under control. Hypertension also costs $131 billion each year—impacting individuals, employers and entire communities.

Created by PHI’s Population Health Innovation Lab and the CDC’s Office of the Associate Director for Policy and Strategy, this toolkit explores and identifies effective tips, tools and strategies in the implementation of evidence-based approaches to improve hypertension control from the CDC’s 6 | 18 Initiative. Toolkit for Change is designed for change agents in businesses, public health, healthcare, and community organizations who are committed to working together—providing a starting place for those interested in making an impact on their community’s heart health.

Download the toolkit

Toolkit for Change will ‘step’ you through three phases that can be used in developing an effective community action collaborative. It provides resources and guidance on selecting “best practices” for hypertension control and making the “business case” for their adoption.

• Step UP covers foundational steps of establishing a community action collaborative and includes tools and resources, as well as case study examples.
• As the collaborative shifts to ‘doing the work,’ Step IN covers topics including data collection, establishing your vision and purpose, developing goals and outcomes, and choosing interventions.
• Once a heart health-focused collaborative is ready to Step OUT, we cover plans for evaluation and implementation, financing and doing the work to main strategies over time, as well as revisiting core collaborative practices.
• There is also a separate section on Understanding the Economics & Value of Hypertension Control, which focuses on the language of economic evaluation of community health investments.

Originally published by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention