About Caring for the Caregiver
In 2017, Women’s Heart Alliance (WHA) collaborated with The Cities and Communities Heart Initiative Nashville (CCHI Nashville) to launch Caring for the Caregiver, a program to improve cardiovascular health and reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors among nurses in Nashville’s hospitals and health systems.
Caring for the Caregiver helped nurses in Nashville, Tennessee focus on their own health and addresses the high rate of heart disease and risk factors among female nurses.
Partners
Program partners TriStar Health, Saint Thomas Health, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Tennessee and Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute implemented screening and prevention programs across their facilities.
Saint Thomas Health also offered heart disease screenings and health awareness events for all 8,000 of its associates, including Spring health fairs at the Saint Thomas Midtown, Saint Thomas Rutherford and Saint Thomas River Park facilities.
UBER Nashville provided in-kind support, including free rides for caregivers, for the program.
Cities and Communities with Heart Initiative (CCHI) Nashville
Caring for the Caregiver was a program of CCHI Nashville, a collaborative initiative envisioned and led by WHA to stop women in Nashville from needlessly suffering and dying from cardiovascular disease. The program took a wide-ranging approach to improve women’s heart health through five program components:
• Caring for the Caregiver, a program to improve cardiovascular health and reduce CVD risk factors among nurses in Nashville’s hospitals and health systems;
• A clinical study on pregnancy complications and their link to CVD risk factors and CVD;
• A workforce health initiative through the Office of the Mayor to improve the heart health of female municipal workers;
• A screening and prevention effort in collaboration with Tennessee State University to reduce CVD and its risk factors in younger women; and
• A community initiative centered around one or more health centers and reaching African American, and/or immigrant refugee women.