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The American Heart Association (AHA) is “building healthier lives where you live and work – in the community, health care, education, and research.”
AHA targets cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke, the number 1 and number 4 causes of death in the country, respectively, to build healthier lives. Their aim is to “advance groundbreaking medical research, spread lifesaving knowledge, and reach out to people of all ages about cardiovascular disease and stroke.”
As the nation’s oldest and largest voluntary organization fighting CVD and stroke, they’ve played a role in achieving many milestones in healthcare, education, and research, in addition to their community outreach initiatives. For more information, please visit their website.
AHA & BPP: Our History & Partnership
The founding coordinators of the Blood Pressure Project (BPP) were originally part of the Asian American Pacific Islander Health Research Group (AAPIHRG) on the UC Berkeley campus. Dr. Candice Wong, a member of the AAPIHRG Community Advisory Board, was aware of AAPIHRG’s intention to focus on the service portion of its vision and mission. In Spring 2013, she introduced the founding coordinators to Donna Lew of the American Heart Association (AHA), San Francisco branch. After an in-person meeting and several e-mail exchanges, (what would later become) BPP and AHA via Donna Lew established a partnership centered around blood pressure screenings, with AHA agreeing to loan several blood pressure monitors. These blood pressure monitors continue to be used to train new BPP members and offer blood pressure screenings in the South Berkeley community.
The partnership between BPP and AHA continues today – however, it does so with a new emphasis: healthy eating. The program is called Simple Cooking With Heart. BPP is currently in the planning stages for implementation of this project and hopes to host its first cooking demonstration in the Spring of 2015, both in the Berkeley community and on the UC Berkeley campus.
Thank you, Donna Lew (Senior Regional Director, Health Equity), for introducing us to the importance of blood pressure and providing us with the resources necessary to kickstart BPP!
