American Heart Month

Samantha Reba

Junior Writer

February is coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean that heart health does! February is American Heart month,¹ and with Valentine’s Day, there is no shortage of hearts. The hearts stand as a wonderful reminder to stay heart healthy throughout the year.

In observance of American Heart Month, Artcraft Health participated in National Wear Red Day, a nationally recognized day for raising awareness about cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the number 1 killer in women.²

American Heart Month is a great way for families, businesses, and the local community to raise efforts, awareness, and education surrounding heart disease. Education removes barriers and solves challenges. Here are some educational facts you may not have known. According to the National Vital Statistics Reports in 2009, approximately 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year.³ That’s 1 in every 4 people. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and woman, and CVD costs the United States more than $300 billion a year, which includes healthcare services and medications.⁴

So what does this mean? Educate, be educated, and take control over your healthcare.

Heart disease can often be prevented with lifestyle changes, such as dietary improvements or engaging in daily exercise. The American Heart Association suggests at least 30 minutes of physical activity per day to reduce your risk of heart disease.

Artcraft Health can help educate patients of all ages about the signs, symptoms, and risks associated with CVD. In addition to informing them about available on treatment options and strategies for managing the disease, Artcraft Health can guide both patients who have CVD and their healthcare providers along the patient journey to help them determine where the greatest challenges to treatment and wellness lie and develop plans for overcoming them. 

Knowledge empowers, and we as educators have an objective to supply the right message at the right time to the right audience. Keep heart health in mind all year!

   References  

1.  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. February Is American Heart Month. http://www.cdc.gov/Features/HeartMonth. Accessed February 27, 2014. 
2.  Global Atlas on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Control. Geneva 2011. Mendis S, Puska P, Norrving B editors. World Health Organization (in collaboration with the World Heart Federation and World Stroke Organization). http://www.world-heart-federation.org/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/Fact_sheets/2012/PressBackgrounderApril2012RiskFactors.pdf. Accessed February 27, 2014. 
3.    Kochanek KD, Xu JQ, Murphy SL, Miniño AM, Kung HC. Deaths: final data for 2009. National vital statistics reports. 2011;60(3). http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf. Accessed February 27, 2014. 
4. Go AS, Mozaffarian D, Roger VL, et al. Heart disease and stroke statistics‑2014 update: a report from the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2014 [Epub ahead of print]

Summer Disease-State Camps

Tom Savonick, Senior Medical Writer

I’m more than a few decades past my summer camp days, but I still vividly recall the sights, sounds, and excitement of Camp Waywayanda, a YMCA camp in the hills of rural Northern New Jersey. In those halcyon days, we swam, played games, told ghost stories around the campfire, and annoyed the local bass with baited hooks that an energetic 8-year-old just couldn’t hold still. Every day at camp seemed the best day ever, and that’s an experience no child should miss.

But, summer camp can be a difficult experience for children with special medical needs. They may not be able to play all the games if a bleeding disorder rules out some of the rougher activities. They may not be able to pig out on fresh s’mores if they haven’t learned how to control their type 1 diabetes. And, they may miss out on the swim if today is their day for chemotherapy.

Fortunately, there are summer camps with activities and education custom tailored for children with special medical needs, such as diabetes, hemophilia, cancer, asthma, and other, less common, conditions. One of the great things about these camps is that every camper there knows what it’s like to have the condition. At camp, kids meet and learn from other kids and adult counselors who:

•  Understand first-hand what it’s like to have their condition
• Share their strategies for coping with their condition
• Learn how to turn everyday challenges into everyday triumphs 
• Inspire campers with their personal accomplishments at school, in play, and at work 
• Help campers make new friends and develop their own lifelong support systems

Fun and education for children with special medical needs are the dual purposes of Artcraft Health Specialty Camps. We are the country's leading creator and producer of national support programs for disease state summer camps. We've developed compelling programs for campers, camp counselors, and clinician educators at specialty camps for asthma, oncology, diabetes, and hemophilia.

In addition to the benefits that our programs provide to campers, they also provide significant benefits to the companies that sponsor the camps:\

• Increases access for field forces
• Reinforces relationships with healthcare professionals, parents, young patients, and the community 
• Builds relationships with clinical staff at camps
• Connects with parent through unbranded, educational take-home materials

Our programs can include any combination of fun and education while empowering campers to feel more in control of their condition. As the lead medical writer on the summer camp program, it’s been a rewarding experience for me to know that I’m helping kids have fun, gain independence, and learn about their conditions. It’s also been a blast to recall those great days I had at summer camp. Like the time when we all got together to lift the head counselor’s tiny German car into a tree about 6 feet off the ground. Or, the time the can of beans exploded in the campfire. I could go on, but maybe it’s time to help a new set of campers create their own memories.

If you’d like to learn more about our disease state camp programs, please visit:

http://www.artcrafthealthed.com/solutions/specialty-camps.aspx

Getting “Face” Time for Clinical Trial Recruitment Using Social Media

Lisa Calderwood, MA

Senior Medical Writer

Recruiting patients on a timely basis for clinical trials is a challenge. Traditional media, such as print ads or television and radio spots, are designed to target desired demographics. But a recent study finds that about 80% of clinical trials fail to meet timelines for enrolling patients.

It’s no wonder, then, that patient recruitment service providers and study sponsors are tapping into social media to find eligible patients. After all, with about 1 billion people worldwide on Facebook (1 in 7 people), the reach and immediacy of the network are undeniable. Plus, ads can be more narrowly targeted to specific regions and users than traditional media.

It appears the social media patient recruitment trend is growing. A January 2013 report by Industry Standard Research (ISR)¹ surveyed 104 patient recruiting agencies globally about using social media to find eligible patients. It revealed that: 

·         17% are avoiding or abandoning social media

·         17% are aggressively using social media and are “rolling out the strategy to many clinical trials”

·         67% report their companies are either “evaluating” the strategy or “testing” the strategy

Gaining traction from Facebook to find emergency patients for trials

What happens when, say, a heart attack patient in the ER is too ill and/or has no one to provide informed consent for him to enroll in a trial on cardiac arrest? Well, there are alternatives. This kind of study can be granted an Exception From Informed Consent (EFIC). The EFIC guidelines—developed by the FDA and Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)—say that in specific circumstances patients can be enrolled without informed consent, but the trial’s investigator and institutional review boards must provide public disclosure and local community consultation before recruiting patients. That usually has meant that EFIC trials use town hall meetings, random phone dialing, and other traditional outreach methods.

That may be changing. In a recent article in MedPage Today, Chris Kaiser reviewed a study published in Circulation, which compared using social media versus traditional methods to comply with public disclosure requirements for EFIC trials. The trials, conducted by the University of Alabama (UAB) School of Medicine, placed targeted Facebook ads for studies related to cardiac arrest and trauma. Those viewers who selected the ads were led to the study’s website. The UAB authors provided a compelling cost/benefit analysis of their social media campaign versus the use of community meetings for another EFIC trial.  

The Facebook campaign cost $1,000 and led to 5.1 million viewer hits ($0.0002 per view). That translated to 437 visitors to the study’s website ($2.29/visit). The traditional campaign cost $8,000 for 39 community meetings, with 465 attendants at $17.24/person.

It’s clear that social media not only has applications for finding eligible patients able to provide informed consent, but also for gaining community support to enroll patients for emergency research studies in which informed consent may not be a viable option. The possibilities are intriguing!

AHE Clinical Trials has expertise in creating engaging digital platforms and traditional media for your patient recruitment campaigns, retention efforts, and patient education needs. Contact Brian Schaechter, Director, Business Development, Clinical Trial Market. Phone: 908-483-4241 E-mail: bschaechter@artcrafthealthed.com

¹ISR Report. Social Media: Best Practices and Strategic Use in Patient Recruitment, January 8, 2013. 104 global respondents. 

Also see: 

MedPage Today.  Facebook May Help Recruit for Cardiac Trials.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PracticeManagement/PracticeManagement/40558?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2013-07-19&eun=g708126d0r&userid=708126&email=cbrock@scottcare.com&mu_id=5870138

 Stephens, SW, et al. Preliminary experience with social media for community consultation and public disclosure in exception from informed consent trials. Circulation 2013; 128: 267-270. http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/128/3/267.extract