Association of Black Cardiologists Issues Call to Action to Promote Health Equity

Cardiovascular health (CVH) disparities persist among minoritized racial/ethnic communities, and sustainable, culturally tailored programs to promote ideal CVH are necessary to advance health equity. Our community-based pilot program successfully met its recruitment goal and equipped community health advocates (CHAs) with evidence-based, community-centric CVH educational and advocacy tools to have a substantial downstream positive public health impact within medically under-resourced communities. Heroically, this was accomplished even in the face of a global public health crisis.

The ABC CHAT program is a practical model of culturally congruent community engagement that could be emulated and adopted globally by medical professional societies and health care organizations to: 1) increase community awareness about cardiovascular disease and associated risk factors; 2) equip community health leaders with knowledge and skills to educate community members about CVH lifestyle changes within their sociocultural contexts; and 3) serve as liaisons between the community, medical professional societies and health care systems. Altogether, these approaches may improve population-level CVH among communities of high cardiometabolic risk.