SAVING HEARTS AND LIVES IN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY

While care access plays a role in explaining heart health disparities, African-Americans also face unequal outcomes when they do seek medical treatment for heart conditions. For example, referrals for cardiac rehabilitation are given to AfricanAmerican patients at a significantly lower rate than the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChicago Citizen Vol. 51; no. 51
Main Author Maryland, Patricia
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chicago, Ill Chicago Weekend 08.03.2017
Subjects
African Americans
Cardiovascular disease
Community
Disease prevention
Heart failure
Hypertension
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Summary:While care access plays a role in explaining heart health disparities, African-Americans also face unequal outcomes when they do seek medical treatment for heart conditions. For example, referrals for cardiac rehabilitation are given to AfricanAmerican patients at a significantly lower rate than their White peers, according to the American Heart Journal. This important type of follow-up care-which includes exercise training, education on heart-healthy living and counseling-is critical for patients. The lack of such care may be one reason African-Americans experience higher readmission and mortality rates than white patients in the year after a heart attack, according to the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust. For our part, healthcare providers must make it our mission to remove barriers for African-American patients to preventive services, specialized care and effective follow-up procedures for heart health. And we must also partner with patients to determine a strategy that can help them effectively monitor and control their conditions. At Ascension, we are acutely aware of the challenges that keep minority patients from accessing healthy heart care. That's why we recently established an ambitious goal: to eliminate race-, ethnicity- and language-based (REaL) disparities in preventable hospitalization related to heart failure by 2022, as well as to achieve a significant reduction in heart failure admissions rates for Medicaid patients in our network.