Of all the health awareness months, May for stroke awareness, is one of the most important.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), someone in the United States has a stroke every 40 seconds. Every 4 minutes, someone dies of stroke. You’re on the clock as soon as you see the signs and symptoms of a stroke.

The acronym BE FAST can help people be on the alert for these stroke signs:

This is a simple message, but many people are not aware of the importance of recognizing these signs and of how serious the consequences of a stroke are.

What can be done to help consumers better understand their health status, and what does it mean for their likelihood of experiencing a stroke?

Health Assessments Can Identify High-Risk Patients

At Medicom Health, the focus of our health risk assessments (HRAs) is patient education and determination of longer-term risk. The Stroke Risk Assessment evaluates the long-term risk for stroke based on factors like age, BMI, smoking status, cholesterol, exercise minutes, family history, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

This Stroke Risk Assessment is NOT designed to be a symptom checker or used in acute situations. Instead, it’s to help educate patients about their personal risk for the condition, as well as things they can do to mitigate that risk.

The Results Speak for Themselves

The Medicom Health Stroke Risk Assessment provides solid ROI for health systems across the country.

Stroke HRA results show that:

• Over 30% of people starting the assessment completed it and provided their contact information.
• 76% of those users clicked on a follow-up call-to-action.

Identifying people at high-risk for stroke in your community provides an immediate opportunity to promote management of chronic care conditions, smoking cessation programs, fitness classes, diabetes support groups, and a number of other services your organization already has in place.

Stroke HRA results show that:

• 29% of users are high risk for stroke.
• And an additional 23% are high risk and also have existing conditions (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, obesity, and/or diabetes).

Health systems with above average success on stroke campaigns use social media to drive traffic to the HRA. This is important because 34% of people hospitalized for stroke are less than 65 years old.

Stroke HRA results show that:

• 40% of users are 40-64 years old.

Good social media targeting will reach 40 to 60-year-olds with risk factors like diabetes, low levels of physical activity, poor diet, high stress, or smoking. People in these categories are often insured and willing to share health information digitally. Yet, because of their youthful age, they may not consider stroke to be a concern. In other words, they are prime candidates for a Stroke Risk HRA!

Contact Medicom Health for more information about our Stroke Risk HRA.

Remember: Stroke can be a scary topic for some people. This is often something consumers do not want to think about happening to them, even though the steps to prevent and identify stroke are relatively simple. Focus messaging on education, prevention and early detection and everyone wins.