Bernadette Melnyk, vice president for health promotion, chief wellness officer and dean of the College of Nursing, accepted the Million Hearts recognition for the Ohio State’s and the Wexner Medical Center’s heart health initiatives alongside Dr. Hal Paz, executive vice president and chancellor for health affairs at Ohio State and CEO of the medical center. Credit: Courtesy of the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center
Heart disease, the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S., has met its match at Ohio State and the Wexner Medical Center.
The university and medical center are the first in the Midwest and third in the U.S. to be recognized by the Million Hearts Hospitals & Health Systems Recognition Program for prevention of heart attacks and strokes, Bernadette Melnyk, vice president for health promotion, chief wellness officer and dean of the College of Nursing, said.
The initiative is led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with the goal of preventing 1 million heart attacks and strokes within five years, Melnyk said.
Dr. Thomas Ryan, executive director of Ohio State’s Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital and director of the Heart and Vascular Center at the medical center, said heart disease includes coronary heart disease, heart attacks, strokes and other conditions related to the heart.
“We’re proud that our efforts have been recognized; this is a very prestigious award,” Ryan said. “And to be one of just a very small number of institutions is a testament to how seriously we take heart disease prevention. It’s also nice because it’s really a reflection of the collaboration that occurs here at Ohio State across many different colleges.”
The first two hospitals to receive the award were New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage, California. HopeHealth in Florence, South Carolina, also received the award after the Wexner Medical Center did, according to the Million Hearts website. The Wexner Medical Center was recognized in February.
Heart disease is the No. 1 killer for both men and women, with one out of three people dying from cardiovascular diseases, Melnyk said. Women often present less severe symptoms than men, leading to a delay in seeking medical care, she said.
Men usually have chest pressure and left shoulder pain that radiates down the arm with difficulty breathing, while women more often experience fatigue, rapid breathing and nausea, Melnyk said. Women can have pain similar to or the same as men, but it’s less common.
Criteria to be recognized as a Million Hearts Health System include creating a healthy environment at the hospital, optimizing heart health care and “achieving excellence in the ABCs (aspirin, blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking cessation),” improving outcomes for high risk populations and innovating for health, according to the Million Hearts website.
“We went on this huge city-wide initiative to really promote the ABCs — A Million Hearts — we really ramped up what we were doing for cardiovascular disease prevention,” Melnyk said. “And we saw an increase of 7 percent improvement in cardiovascular health across the university.”
Million Hearts recognized several examples of innovation and initiatives at Ohio State and the medical center, such as the Ross Heart Hospital Garden, a garden that grows healthy foods and where staff provide patients with healthy cooking classes and education, and screening events that encourage people to check their blood pressure, weight, cholesterol and blood sugar, Ryan said.
Heart disease can be prevented through lifestyle changes such as eating healthy, exercising, not smoking and seeing a doctor regularly, Ryan said.
“Getting regular checkups with our primary care physician to ensure that some of the other, what we call, ‘risk factors for heart disease’ — things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes — things like that are either not present, or if they are present, they are treated and controlled,” Ryan said.
However, Ryan said there is still work to do in the fight against heart disease.
“If we were successful, then heart disease would not still be the No. 1 cause of death in America,” Ryan said. “So while we’ve made a lot of progress we’re committed to continuing the fight, and we hope we can encourage as many Ohioans as possible to join us in that commitment.”
