Research shows that engaging CHWs in a team-based care model where CHWs work with patients, physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers leads to large improvements in blood pressure and cholesterol outcomes. Studies also show that there are modest improvements in health behavior outcomes (e.g., physical activity, healthful eating habits, and smoking cessation) when CHWs were engaged as health education providers or as outreach, enrollment, and information agents. [Source: The Community Guide]
Effective training in understanding more about the heart and risk factors for heart disease has become essential for CHWs in the field.
This course is 3 hours long and is offered via ZOOM and in-person. Participants will receive a certificate of attendance at the end of the course.
Fast Facts on Heart Health
Your heart beats over 100,000 times per day.
Your heart pumps about 1.5 gallons of blood every minute. Over the course of a day, that adds up to over 2,000 gallons.
There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. That’s enough to go around the world twice.
The average heartbeat of a woman is about 8 beats a minute faster than a man’s heartbeat.
An adult heart is about the size of 2 hands clasped together. A child’s heart is about the size of a fist.*
As amazing as the heart is, there is reason to pay attention to heart health:
- Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States.1
- One person dies every 34 seconds in the United States from cardiovascular disease.1
- About 697,000 people in the United States died from heart disease in 2020—that’s 1 in every 5 deaths.1,2
- Heart disease cost the United States about $229 billion each year from 2017 to 2018.3 This includes the cost of health care services, medicines, and lost productivity due to death.
What You’ll Learn:
At the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Describe the basic pathophysiology of diabetes
- Define risk factors for diabetes
- Be able to state normal blood sugar ranges
- Describe the connection between diabetes and heart disease
- Understand the role of social determinants/influencers of health in diabetes management
- Define prediabetes and the risk factors for prediabetes.
- Describe how a CHW can improve outcomes in diabetes patients