Guides

How to Promote Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention in the Workplace: A Guide for Employers, Program Coordinators, and Health Benefit Designers
Employers from organizations of all sizes in all industries can use this CDC-developed guide to help plan, implement, and evaluate workplace health promotion programs aimed to prevent stroke and heart disease.

Best Practices for Heart Disease and Stroke: A Guide to Effective Approaches and Strategies
This guide describes and summarizes scientific evidence behind 18 effective strategies for lowering high blood pressure and cholesterol levels that can be implemented in health care systems and that involve community-clinical links.

These guides cover a wide range of topics to help health professionals prevent and control heart disease and stroke in their communities.

• Addressing Chronic Disease through Community Health Workers: A Policy and Systems-Level Approach [PDF–715K]
  This resource provides evidence demonstrating the value and impact of CHWs in preventing and managing a variety of chronic diseases. In addition, this resource includes descriptions of chronic disease programs that are engaging CHWs, examples of state legislative action, and resources to build an integrated and sustainable CHW workforce.
• Community-Clinical Linkages for the Prevention and Control of Chronic Diseases: A Practitioner’s Guide [PDF-1.7M]
  This guide is a resource for public health practitioners to define and facilitate community-clinical linkages.
• Self-Measured Blood Pressure Monitoring Action Guide [PDF-1M]
  Self-measured blood pressure monitoring plus additional clinical support is a strategy that can reduce the risk of disability or death from high blood pressure. The purpose of this guide is to help clinicians implement self-measured blood pressure monitoring in their practices by providing evidence-based action steps and resources.

These guides include resources and information for health professionals partnering with pharmacists as well as tools and strategies pharmacists can use to improve patient care.

• The Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process Approach: An Implementation Guide
  This implementation guide is for public health practitioners and health care professionals to help engage pharmacists in hypertension management through the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process. The Guide includes key examples from the Michigan Medicine Hypertension Pharmacists’ Program that health care teams can replicate in their own programs.
• Pharmacist-Provided Medication Therapy Management in Medicaid [PDF – 395 KB]
  This guide can help state health agencies and Medicaid stakeholders develop strategies to implement or expand pharmacist-provided medication therapy management (MTM). Implementing MTM can help improve care for Medicaid beneficiaries with chronic conditions, including cardiovascular disease (CVD).
• Collaborative Practice Agreements and Pharmacists’ Patient Care Services Resources
  This set of guides informs health care providers, decision-makers, insurers, and pharmacists about the role of pharmacists in team based care. The guides help put science into practice by including strategies and case examples of how pharmacists and other health care providers can better serve patients through collaborative practice agreements and collaborative drug therapy management.
  • For Nurses, Physician Assistants, and Other Providers [PDF-301K]
  • For Pharmacists [PDF-308K]
  • For Government and Private Payers [PDF-303K]
  • For Decision Makers [PDF-307K]
• Methods and Resources for Engaging Pharmacy Partners [PDF-765K]
  This publication provides public health departments with methods and resources they can use to engage pharmacy partners to enhance team-based care and form community-clinical linkages. It highlights methods that can be used to develop and expand partnerships between health departments and pharmacies, as well as complementary pharmacy resources.
• Using the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process to Manage High Blood Pressure: A Resource Guide for Pharmacists [PDF-633K]
  The Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process is a way to prevent and manage high blood pressure through team-based care. This guide provides information about current resources and emerging practices, as well as tools and examples that pharmacists can use to help improve health outcomes associated with cardiovascular disease.
• Creating Community-Clinical Linkages Between Community Pharmacists and Physicians: A Pharmacy Guide [PDF-1.1M]  |  High-Resolution [PDF-6.4M]
  This guide describes a framework for creating linkages between community pharmacists and physicians that benefit community collaborators and the patients they serve. This resource serves as a supplement to Community-Clinical Linkages for the Prevention and Control of Chronic Diseases: A Practitioner’s Guide [PDF-1.6M].

CDC developed this series of five evaluation technical assistance tools to highlight evaluation strategies and successful examples.

• Evaluation Reporting: A Guide to Help Ensure Use of Evaluation Findings
• Writing SMART Objectives
• Developing and Using a Logic Model
• Fundamentals of Evaluating Partnerships
• Practical Strategies for Culturally Competent Evaluation

Moving Into Action: Promoting Heart-Healthy and Stroke-Free Communities (Part of the Public Health Action Plan)
This guide is a series of action items designed to help governors, state legislators, local officials, employers, and health care leaders promote heart–healthy and stroke–free communities. Included are examples gathered from states and communities that are working to reduce these risks and a summary of the science underlying heart disease and stroke prevention.

These data resource guides cover a wide range of topic for the prevention and control of heart disease and stroke in communities.

• Data Set Directory of Social Determinants of Health at the Local Level
  This directory contains an extensive list of existing data sets that can be used to address social health determinants. The data sets are organized according to 12 broad categories of the social environment.
• Surveillance and Evaluation Data Resource Guide for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Programs [PDF – 682 KB]
  This guide is an at-a-glance compilation of data sources useful for heart disease and stroke prevention programs conducting policy or data surveillance and/or evaluation. It is meant to be used by program managers and evaluators in the planning and evaluation stages of prevention programs.

These guides are designed for health professionals and community workers to use in their heart disease and stroke prevention programs.

• Heart-Healthy and Stroke-Free: A Social Environment Handbook
  In this handbook, public health professionals, advocacy groups, and community and state leaders will find specific ideas and strategies for identifying barriers and promoters for heart-healthy and stroke-free living in local environments. Although many public health tools are available for “community diagnosis,” this handbook is unique because of its focus on prevention and treatment of heart disease and stroke.
• Prevention Works: CDC Strategies for a Heart-Healthy and Stroke-Free America
  This guide provides a snapshot of heart diseases and stroke prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also provides information on the health and economic costs of chronic diseases to the nation and outlines CDC’s prevention strategies.