Heart Healthy Ohio Initiative Presents at the 2023 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting

By: Caroline Carter, Chief Transformation Officer, Health Impact Ohio

The Heart Healthy Ohio Initiative (HHOI) had the distinct honor of being invited to present two posters at the 2023 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM). ARM convened a large and diverse group of stakeholders at the intersection of health, health care, and policy to share important findings and showcase the latest research on how the health system works, what it costs, and how to improve it.

Background:

• Ohio is in the top quartile of states for cardiovascular disease (CVD) events.

• In 2021 HHOI, funded by The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, established a statewide primary care quality improvement (QI) collaborative to improve and better understand CVD opportunities for improvement and capacity for QI in Ohio primary care practices.

• As part of the project HHOI partnered with payers, public health agencies, and other stakeholders with the goal of aligning efforts to improve cardiovascular health outcomes.

Poster: Codesign Results of the Heart Healthy Ohio Quality Improvement Project outlines the unique 6 step process of the codesign process that engaged those who are not traditionally involved with designing QI interventions e.g., payers and patients to help with the design of a more resonant QI initiative in order to amplify buy-in. The codesign method resulted in impactful adaptations to the broader intervention implementation with 50 primary care practices.

Poster: Opportunities to Improve Cardiovascular Health and Quality Improvement Capacity describes current CVD opportunities for improvement and current QI capacity across a diverse set of Ohio primary care practices participating in a statewide CVD QI project.

Learn more about the Heart Healthy Ohio Initiative here: hearthealthyohio.org.