Grant: Team Grant: Community-Based Primary Healthcare - Full Application

The most prevalent chronic health conditions are largely the product of interactions among a small set of well-established, modifiable causes, such as smoking, having a sedentary lifestyle, heavy drinking and high salt consumption. These chronic health conditions, notably obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, are on the rise nationally and internationally. In order to combat this epidemic, the Canadian Chronic Disease Awareness and Management Program (C-ChAMP) will address these common problems by implementing a program designed to raise awareness, encourage self-care and transfer the onus of treatment from hospitals into the community. C-ChAMP will build off of the success of a previous model of treatment, the Cardiovascular Health Awareness Program (CHAP), which has already been shown to significantly decrease hospitalization rates in the communities in which it was established. The researchers behind CHAP now hope to increase the scope and impact of CHAP by targeting a wider audience with a wider range of chronic diseases. In order to accomplish this, C-ChAMP will collaborate with community partners, such as local pharmacists, family physicians, and social organizations so that the program can be adjusted to meet local needs. Information sessions, open to the public at large but targeted at individuals over 40, are held in local pharmacies, where trained volunteers perform tasks that would typically be conducted in the doctor's office. These include blood pressure monitoring, conducting cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and pre-diabetes risk assessments, and providing information about locally available resources (exercise programs, smoking cessation clubs, etc). These results are then transmitted to the participant's family physician, pharmacist, and his/herself so that a health profile can be established. This ensures a continuity of health care monitoring that is currently lacking in our overburdened health care system.