Kaiser Permanente grants $1M for Silicon Valley Heart health

Kaiser Permanente announced $1,000,000 in grants to 2 community health organizations in the Silicon Valley to help increase access to care for people who are at greatest risk for heart attacks and strokes. The grants are part of a larger, $5.8 million investment aimed at expanding the reach and scope of the organization’s Preventing Heart Attacks and Strokes Every day (PHASE) program, as well as additional resources to support training and technical assistance aimed at optimizing implementation of the program in community settings.

The organizations are the Community Health Partnership of Santa Clara and the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Both will receive grants of $500,000 to expand their PHASE programs.

PHASE combines effective, well-tolerated, generic medications and lifestyle changes to provide an evidence-based, cost-effective treatment for people with existing heart disease and those at greatest risk for developing it, including individuals with diabetes who are ages 55 years and older. The heart healthy regimen has helped Kaiser Permanente reduce heart attacks and stroke-related hospital admissions among its own members by 60 percent since it began the program in 2002. Kaiser Permanente has been sharing the program with community health centers through a combination of grant funding, clinical expertise, and physician mentors since 2006.

"PHASE works," says Dr. Eleanor Levin, a cardiologist at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara, and a early adopter of the PHASE protocol. "Not only have we seen heart attacks and strokes decrease dramatically in our members, but our patients are consistently taking their medications, and adopting healthy lifestyle changes like increased exercise and healthy diets to improve their heart health. Adopting our program in the community clinics has improved the heart health for all Californians, making California a leader in the reduction of vascular disease mortality nationwide.”

Today, 112 clinic sites in Northern California, which includes 25 public hospital/health department clinics (representing 4 public hospital systems) and 87 clinic sites from 32 health centers (representing 4 consortia) are providing care to more than 120,000 patients with diabetes and hypertension.

The grants will allow Santa Clara Valley Center to add nearly 4,000 heart patients to its PHASE program, Community Health Partnership will add 3,000.