HEARTS in the Americas appraisal checklist and clinical pathway for comprehensive hypertension management in primary care

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the Region of the Americas, and hypertension represents its main risk factor. However, population hypertension control rates in the Region are poor. Global Hearts is the World Health Organization's flagship initiative t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública
Main Authors: Andres Rosende, Donald DiPette, Jeffrey Brettler, Gonzalo Rodríguez, Eric Zuniga, Kenneth Connell, Pedro Ordunez
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Spanish
Portuguese
Published: Pan American Health Organization 2022
Subjects:
cardiovascular diseases
hypertension
practice guideline
clinical protocols
critical pathways
public health
americas
Medicine
R
Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine
RC955-962
Public aspects of medicine
RA1-1270
Arctic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2022.125
https://doaj.org/article/e3bd358d8f044e519b61a88c8ae43980
Description
Summary:Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the Region of the Americas, and hypertension represents its main risk factor. However, population hypertension control rates in the Region are poor. Global Hearts is the World Health Organization's flagship initiative to reduce the burden of cardiovascular diseases. HEARTS in the Americas Initiative is its regional adaptation that seeks to be the cardiovascular disease risk management model, including hypertension and diabetes, in primary health care throughout the Americas by 2025. HEARTS in the Americas is being implemented in 22 countries and over 2 095 primary care centers. All implementing countries have defined their treatment protocols, and HEARTS in the Americas has supported continuous improvement. Because WHO recently released the 2021 Guideline for the Pharmacological Treatment of Hypertension in Adults and HEARTS in the Americas introduced the key drivers for hypertension control, the initiative generated a methodology to help countries update and strengthen their treatment protocols. This article describes the process of developing the treatment protocol appraisal checklist and defines the resulting clinical pathway. This tool can help countries and primary care centers to improve their protocols by identifying the improvement points and upgrading clinical pathways.

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