FREE Heart Health Screening Event
Tuesday, March 5th
9am-1pm
Moretown Elementary School
Blood Pressure & Cholesterol Screenings by Dartmouth Health HVC CARES team. Accompanied by tailored education based upon screening results. Screening takes less than 5 minutes!!
Increasing Awareness to Prevent Cardiovascular Illness
"Community is my passion. It's so important to reach people early about healthy eating, hypertension, and things they can do to prevent cardiac disease."
–Leane Matchem, BSN, RN, HVC CARES Coordinator
Saving lives doesn't just happen in the operating room; it can also happen before heart and vascular disease ever appears. Patients at high risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol can avoid heart disease with the right therapies and lifestyle changes—but only if they know that they're at risk. That's why D-HH is investing in community outreach, bringing greater awareness of general and individual risk factors to rural areas of New Hampshire and Vermont.
HVC CARES (Heart & Vascular Center Community Awareness Research and Education Saves Lives) is the only program of its kind in the Upper Valley that brings free, no-hassle blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol screening to those who have limited access to healthcare. Too often, we have seen patients come to us with advanced stages of disease that would have been detected much earlier with screening. Patients who have not seen a doctor for years often don't realize the harm they may be causing themselves. In other cases, they may have difficulty managing the logistics of travel and insurance, or the costs of time off from work and finding childcare, to get to the doctor for a routine visit.
HVC CARES travels to rural communities throughout our catchment area, visiting farmers' markets, community centers, food pantries, fairs, sports events, and other public gatherings. CARES nurses set up a tent on site and typically screen 30–50 people at each location. (The program paused in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic but has since resumed.)
Entire families are welcomed under their tent—even kids too young for screening can squeeze a free stress ball and chat about the benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables while parents or other relatives get checked. The team also distributes educational resources that promote a heart-healthy lifestyle to all visitors.
Inevitably, CARES screenings will reveal hidden or potential problems for some number of people who pass through the tent. The team then refers each patient to a doctor in their local area or arranges for them to come to DHMC. These simple steps can have a dramatic impact on keeping their disease from worsening or causing a catastrophic event such as a heart attack.
HVC CARES is a simple concept, bringing a clinic to the people who need it most, and it is fulfilling its goal to reduce cardiovascular disease through prevention. But that success comes at a cost: nursing staff, vehicles and gas, screening equipment, and educational materials add up and need to be replenished annually. And there is currently no opportunity for program expansion.
With additional funds, HVC CARES could add a nutritionist to the traveling team to offer cooking demonstrations and provide additional resources, such as how to eat healthily on a tight budget. It could add vehicles and collaborate with visiting nurses to send multiple teams out into the community. One day, the program might even be able to secure an accessible mobile unit with the ability to hold portable ultrasound equipment to screen for aneurysms and other more complicated vascular problems, ultimately saving more lives.
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