HealthyHearts NYC: Primary Care Partnerships to Advance Heart Health, a collaboration of NYU Langone Medical Center’s Department of Population Health, the Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS) and the Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH), has been awarded a $15 million, three-year federal grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to help primary care practices use the latest evidence to improve the heart health of millions of Americans. HealthyHearts NYC is one of only seven grant recipients nationwide to serve as part of the AHRQ initiative, EvidenceNOW—Advancing Heart Health in Primary Care. EvidenceNOW supports the broad effort of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for Better Care, Smarter Spending, and Healthier People and is also aligned with HHS's Million Hearts® national initiative to prevent heart attacks and strokes.
HealthyHearts NYC will recruit and engage 250 to 300 small, primary care practices, including Federally Qualified Health centers (FQHC) to adopt the 'ABCS' of cardiovascular prevention: aspirin use by high risk individuals, blood pressure control, cholesterol management and smoking cessation. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States. In New York City alone, 28 percent of individuals suffer from hypertension, and 29 percent suffer from high blood cholesterol, according to a 2012 NYC DOHMH survey of 10,000 adult New Yorkers. In addition, residents of the poorest neighborhoods in the city consistently have higher mortality rates from cardiovascular disease, compared with residents of higher income neighborhoods.
“This project will bring critical expertise, resources and innovative quality improvement support to our NYC FQHCs to advance their efforts to provide high quality prevention and cardiovascular care to some of NYC’s most vulnerable communities,” said Diane Ferran, M.D., M.P.H, Senior Director of Clinical Quality Improvement at CHCANYS. “We are excited to partner with NYU and NYC DOHMH on this initiative, which provides us with an opportunity to leverage our resources and make primary care practices in NYC stronger,” commented Kathy Alexis, MPH, CHES, Director of the Quality Improvement Program at CHCANYS.
The HealthyHearts NYC grant is part of one of the largest research investments to date by AHRQ. For more information about AHRQ's EvidenceNOW initiative, including details on each of the grantees and cooperatives, visit: http://www.ahrq.gov/evidencenow.html.
