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A
Public Health Action Plan to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke
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Section 3. Recommendations: A Call to Action
Fundamental Requirements
The Working Group
determined that two of the Expert Panels’ recommendations were paramount and
should be elevated above the others as fundamental requirements. These
requirements address the crosscutting aspects of effective communication, as
well as strategic leadership, partnerships, and organization.
Effective Communication
- The urgency and
promise of preventing heart disease and stroke and their precursors (i.e.,
atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, and their risk factors and
determinants) must be communicated effectively by the public health
community through a new long-term strategy of public information and
education. This new strategy must engage national, state, and local policy
makers and other stakeholders.
Together, these
partners must help the public understand three basic messages. First,
heart disease and stroke and related conditions pose a serious threat to
the health and well-being of all Americans, especially (but not only)
during the middle and older adult years. Second, prevention is possible by
reversing community-acquired behaviors, risks, and health disparities.
Third, the consequence of failing to intensify preventive efforts is steep
escalation in the burden and cost of these diseases in the next two
decades and beyond. Success requires a communications infrastructure that
includes federal, state, and local public health agencies, tribal
organizations, and other government agencies working in partnership with
the media and other related sectors.
Communication and
education are fundamental to achieving policy and environmental changes,
which are strongly recommended in this plan. In addition, policy makers
must receive the information necessary to appreciate the urgency of the
cardiovascular disease (CVD) epidemic and the opportunity that exists to
arrest and reverse it. Leaders in prevention have argued for more than a
decade that a broad societal commitment is needed for effective public
health efforts to prevent heart disease and stroke. This commitment will
depend on critical stakeholders devising and adopting a long-range
strategy to convey clear, consistent, and contemporary messages to the
public and policy makers.
Strategic Leadership, Partnerships, and Organization
- The nation’s public
health agencies and their partners must provide the necessary leadership
for a comprehensive public health strategy to prevent heart disease and
stroke.
Appropriate
organizational arrangements and sufficient support are needed to achieve
effective collaborations among all major partners and to implement the
plan. Public health agencies must develop the expertise to create and
maintain strong partnerships to advance the agenda for preventing heart
disease and stroke at local, state, and national levels. Both traditional
and nontraditional partners, including many beyond the health sector, are
needed to fully implement the plan.
Strong and committed
public health leadership is required to undertake and sustain major new
efforts sufficient to arrest and reverse the nation’s CVD epidemic. An
agency with an appropriate mission, a tradition of relationships with
official health agencies and national organizations of public health
professionals, and extensive experience in developing and implementing
population-wide and community-based health strategies could provide the
necessary leadership.
Developing and
maintaining effective partnerships requires that public health agencies
acquire nontraditional skills and competencies such as knowledge of other
relevant organizations and agencies and expertise in communication,
collaboration, and negotiation. These skills are presently limited in many
if not most public health agencies. When these limitations are overcome,
other agencies and organizations in the health sector and in fields that
indirectly affect health (e.g., education, agriculture, transportation,
community planning) can become engaged in cardiovascular health (CVH)
issues and activities.
Next Section: Recommendation for the
Five Essential Components of the Plan
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