Our Approach
ICHA provides communities with the tools and techniques to prevent the development of cardiovascular disease. Through its programs, ICHA educates local community members to implement cost-effective methods to identify and modify the cardiovascular risk factors, such as diabetes, hypertension, and tobacco use. Modification of these risk factors is clinically proven to significantly decrease the incidence of devastating heart attacks and strokes. By teaching local health workers and community members to prevent disease in their own communities, ICHA creates a means for sustainable change in cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality.
ICHA focuses on two forms of community training. First, ICHA works with developing world communities to provide comprehensive teaching programs that train local health workers in resource-poor settings to prevent cardiovascular disease through risk factor identification and intervention. Through these programs, health workers learn to use evidence-based methods of sustainable cardiovascular disease prevention including assessment of overall cardiovascular risk and modification of five major risk factors.
ICHA also works with communities to create culturally appropriate initiatives that teach individuals to effect lifestyle changes that will have a lasting impact on decreasing cardiovascular disease risk. Studies show that the most effective cardiovascular disease prevention occurs with integrated initiatives that target risk factors in both population wide and high-risk settings. ICHA uses this integrated approach to attack multiple risk factors on both clinical and community fronts.
