The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) WISEWOMAN program serves a primarily rural resident and Alaska Native population living in small isolated communities on the archipelago of Southeast Alaska. In line with the CDC’s goal to alleviate health disparities in specific populations, the target population for the SEARHC WISEWOMAN Program is low income women of all races, ages 40-64 who are uninsured or under-insured who live in isolated, rural communities. Strategies targeting these women are designed to provide cardiovascular screening and prevention services, with an emphasis on hypertension control, in the patient’s community of residence. This eliminates the burden of having to travel by boat or plane to a larger community to receive cardiovascular preventative screening and healthy behavior support services (HBSS).
SEARHC WISEWOMAN will increase blood pressure control and improve detection, prevention, and control of cardiovascular disease by developing, refining, and disseminating the Sitka pilot project to provide team-based care for hypertension. WISEWOMAN will implement a protocol for identifying undiagnosed cases from the Cerner Electronic Medical Record (EMR), connect women to HBSS through bi-directional referrals, and directly provide HBSS or partner with community organizations to provide HBSS. The team will include SEARHC primary care providers throughout the region, WISEWOMAN Patient Care Coordinators, pharmacists, dietitians, and health educators (supported by WISEWOMAN and other sources). As a regional healthcare provider, SEARHC has healthcare professionals throughout Southeast Alaska working together in the Cerner EMR to provide and document coordinated care. The team-based care and protocol for case identification will start in Sitka in Year 1, expanding to all sites by Year 5. SEARHC will use a dedicated Performance Improvement Specialist to lead these system change/quality improvement efforts. SEARHC will leverage the capabilities of its system-wide Cerner EMR to create a hypertension registry, electronic referrals to HBSS, and reports to identify, manage, and guide treatment of patients with hypertension. The Cerner EMR will connect directly to the eCaST women’s health (WISEWOMAN and NBCCEDP) tracking system for regular updates of patient data.
SEARHC’s very rural service area has minimal presence of other HBSS providers, so SEARHC directly provides evidence-based and evidence-informed strategies (EBS/EIS) for HBSS in many communities, as well as partnering with other organizations where available. SEARHC WISEWOMAN partners internally with SEARHC NBCCEDP (sharing most staff between both programs), SEARHC Indian Health Service Special Diabetes Program for Indians (several EBS HBSS), and the SEARHC Tobacco program (support for cessation including electronic referrals to the Quitline). External partners include State of Alaska CDC-funded Chronic Disease and Tobacco Prevention programs, the CDC Good Health and Wellness in Indian Country grant at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the Hames Center (fitness classes), and the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center (harvest and preservation of traditional Alaska Native foods).
Since program inception in 2000, the SEARHC WISEWOMAN Program has provided over 14,000 screenings to 4,908 eligible women across 13 Southeast Alaska communities. SEARHC is projecting to provide WISEWOMAN services to 700 women in FY19. Through these screenings and associated HBSS, SEARHC WISEWOMAN will continue to reduce cardiovascular disease risk in enrolled women.