Actions for Local Officials

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Why should local officials promote heart–healthy and stroke–free communities?

Local officials hold an important and valuable position for protecting the health of the people in their community. This document provides a range of actions you can take to promote heart–healthy and stroke–free communities, which revolve around four central themes:

• Demonstrate leadership.
• Implement policies and incentives to make healthy choices the easy choices.
• Promote coverage for and use of preventive health services.
• Implement life–saving improvements in health services and medical response.

Demonstrate leadership

• Be a role model: display educational materials and establish worksite policies to support heart health in your office. Share your heart–healthy activities with the media (e.g., getting your blood pressure checked, using the stairs). If you or a family member has cardiovascular disease, share your story.¹
   
• Be a champion: create a local task force on heart disease and stroke.¹
   
• Support awareness campaigns about the
  * Signs and symptoms of heart attacks and stroke.²
  * Urgency of calling 9–1–1 when these signs and symptoms first appear.²
  * Prevention of risk factors, such as physical inactivity and smoking.³
   
• Through county and local health departments, organize tobacco use cessation and blood pressure and cholesterol management programs or campaigns. Encourage collaboration among businesses, schools, health systems, community groups, and foundations.¹
   
• Start or encourage growth in walking clubs. Offer a walk with your mayor, county commissioner, or county supervisor.¹

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Implement policies and incentives to make healthy choices the easy choices

• Establish zoning laws for new communities to encourage high–density and mixed land use and require attention to walking/bike pathways, sidewalks, and green spaces for physical activity.²
   
• Assess the walkability of your community. If needed, establish walking trails and parks to encourage physical activity.³
   
• Institute transportation policies that encourage mass transit, walking, and biking.²
   
• Set an example by establishing local policies to prohibit smoking in workplaces and public places. Include the prohibition of all tobacco use by students, staff, and visitors on school property and at school events, on or off campus.³
   
• For school boards, promote coordinated school health programs, which can prevent risk behaviors that contribute to heart disease and stroke by
  * Maintaining or establishing enhanced physical education classes.³
  * Serving and promoting heart–healthy food in cafeterias and vending machines.²
  * Implementing smoke–free schools and campuses.³
  * Prohibiting withholding of recess as punishment.¹
   
• Work with groups such as the Chamber of Commerce to encourage employers to provide healthy worksites.¹

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Promote coverage for and use of preventive health services in your community

• Negotiate a health benefits package for city and county employees that includes preventive services and incentives for preventing cardiovascular disease.²
   
• Through county and local health departments and community health centers, support heart disease and stroke programs that prevent risk factors such as high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, tobacco use, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition.¹
   
• Promote tobacco cessation services, including state quitlines.³

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Implement life–saving improvements in health services and medical response

• Ensure that your wireless, enhanced 911 system (WE9–1–1), which allows an emergency call center to capture the precise location of a caller, identifies stroke as a medical emergency.²
   
• Ensure that your hospital can provide the latest treatment advances in stroke care.²

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To view some examples of policies that promote heart–healthy and stroke–free communities, click HERE.

Date last reviewed: 05/12/2006
Content source: Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion