A
Public Health Action Plan to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke
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Section 2. A Comprehensive Public Health Strategy and the Five Essential
Components of the Plan: A Platform for Action
Summary
Section 2 presents a
vision of cardiovascular health (CVH) that is achievable through a
comprehensive public health strategy. Such a strategy will guide the needed
action, from preventing heart disease and stroke among healthy people to
treating and managing these conditions when prevention has failed. To
develop the strategy, an action framework was developed that outlines the
present reality, a vision of the future, and six broad intervention
approaches that can help achieve this vision. These six approaches address
the two overarching goals of Healthy People 2010, which are to
increase quality and years of healthy life and eliminate health disparities,
as well as the specific goal for preventing heart disease and stroke.
The action framework
helps to distinguish two widely recognized aspects of intervention—health
promotion and disease prevention—as they apply to heart disease and stroke.
It also describes the nature and magnitude of the target population for each
intervention approach. These descriptions illustrate a striking imbalance
between the lack of investment in prevention—when risk is still low—and the
massive expenditures for health care once recognized cardiovascular disease
(CVD) has developed. A comprehensive public health strategy must address
this imbalance.
The meaning of "public
health" is central to the concept of a comprehensive public health strategy
and is clearly stated in the 1988 Institute of Medicine report, The
Future of Public Health. That report defined public health and its core
functions and emphasized that state public health agencies have the primary
responsibility for these functions. The report also described the potential
roles of other parties, including health agencies at federal, state, and
local (i.e., county/city) levels; health care providers; other partners in
and outside the health sector; the public at large; and representatives of
specific population groups or particular target settings.
To proceed from a
comprehensive public health strategy to a practical plan of action requires
that specific recommendations be developed and concrete action steps be
proposed. Accordingly, recommendations and related action steps are
presented in five essential areas that constitute the core of this plan.
Next Section: Introduction: A Vision of
Cardiovascular Health for America
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Date last reviewed:
05/12/2006
Content source: Division for Heart Disease and Stroke
Prevention,
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and
Health Promotion |
