Last Updated: October 22, 2024
RHHD’s Community Health Assessment (CHA) revealed three major areas where residents saw big health challenges:
- Community Safety and Violence Prevention
- Chronic Disease
- Mental, Health, including Substance Use Disorder
Today, we’re focusing on Chronic Disease. CDC defines chronic diseases as “conditions that last 1 year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living, or both.” Chronic diseases can include heart disease, cancers, and diabetes. More research also includes Long COVID as a chronic condition.
In honor of Health Literacy Month and National Health Education Week, we’re spending time today with staff who help residents learn about and prevent chronic disease. We’re especially grateful for staff who work in multiple languages to share important health information with our communities. Keep an eye out for resources you can share in languages other than English!
Do you have ideas about how to reduce the impact of chronic disease in our communities? If so, you can join RHHD’s Community Health Improvement Planning Committee by filling out this interest form!
Preventing heart disease one blood pressure reading at a time
Health Literacy Check: The American Heart Association has great multilingual resources on blood pressure! Find and share information about blood pressure in Arabic, Vietnamese, Spanish, and Chinese.
Yovaldi works to keep communities informed about high blood pressure.
In the United States, almost half of all adults have high blood pressure, or hypertension. Only a quarter of these adults have their blood pressure under control through medication or other management. High blood pressure increases your risk for heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes, which is why it’s such an important vital sign.
At RHHD’s Southwood Resource Center, Community Health Worker Yovaldi Lamoutt wants to make sure all residents know their blood pressure. At community events, she helps people take and record their blood pressure. If someone has high blood pressure, she loans them a blood pressure cuff and teaches them how to use it correctly.
Yovaldi’s passion for preventive health—steps you can take to care for yourself before you get sick—comes from watching her mom deal with chronic disease. “Now, I really advocate for people to take care of themselves, to work out, to eat well, and to check signs like your blood pressure.” Yovaldi shares tips for getting started:
- Learn your blood pressure. You can have your blood pressure checked at an RHHD resource center, at a regular doctor’s visit, at a local pharmacy, or even at a Richmond Public Library location! If you have high blood pressure, you may need to monitor it more regularly.
- Understand your numbers. The charts below explain what counts as a normal reading and tells you when to reach out to a healthcare provider immediately.
- Take action. If you have elevated or high blood pressure, Yovaldi says it’s “important to follow up with the doctor for a diagnosis and medication if you need it.”
Yovaldi works to keep communities informed about high blood pressure.