Project: From guidelines to action

From guidelines to action
This project aims to help the heart failure community advocate for change to close the gap between clinical guidelines and the reality of care for people living with heart failure.

What is From guidelines to action?

There are over 10 million people living with heart failure in Europe, but 28% of them are not receiving guideline-recommended best-practice care. This is unacceptable.

This project aims to equip and empower the heart failure community with information and insight around clinical guidelines and how they can be implemented. Through a series of publications, HFPN informs advocates about the European Society of Cardiology guidelines, the processes by which they are developed and, crucially, how they can be implemented through effective policies.
 

National advocacy landscape briefings

In 2022, the HFPN launched a series of country-specific advocacy briefings that identify existing tools and mechanisms available to drive system change at the national and local levels. Further reports for France, Italy and Germany will be published in 2023.
 
Download France briefing

Download Germany briefing

Download Italy briefing (English)

Download Italy briefing (Italian)

Download Spain briefing

 

From guidelines to action: opportunities for change

The first report launched as part of this research gives an overview of opportunities for change following the release of the updated guidelines. If you would like to share the messages from this report, please find the accompanying communications pack here.
 
Download report
 

What’s new in international guidelines?

This report gives an overview of how key international guidelines are developed, in addition to notable changes in the latest European Society of Cardiology (2021) and American Heart Association (2022) heart failure guidelines. The report also offers tips on how heart failure advocates might use updates to the guidelines to engage with policymakers and drive forward improvements in care and outcomes.
 
Download report
 
 
This project follows on from our earlier work, Understanding heart failure guidelines, which explained the context and content of heart failure clinical guidelines; and Heart failure policy and practice in Europe, which detailed the current state of heart failure care and surrounding policies in 11 European countries.

What could we achieve with this work?

 
To view this animation in French, German, Italian and Spanish click here.
 

International clinical societies have produced evidence-based guidelines which, if properly implemented, could improve and extend the lives of people with heart failure and help to reduce pressure on health systems and economies. But these important opportunities cannot be grasped without change in policy and practice.

From guidelines to action aims to equip and empower the heart failure community with information and insight around clinical guidelines and how they can be implemented.

We hope to provide the heart failure community with the information they need to engage policymakers and push for guidelines to be translated into action. To aid this, we suggest the following ‘policy hooks’:

  • Focus on preventing hospitalisations
  • Highlight how heart failure relates to other conditions
  • Encourage monitoring of quality indicators
  • Put quality of life at the heart of the discussion.

Read more about these ‘policy hooks’ in Opportunities for change following the 2021 European Society of Cardiology heart failure guidelines.

Project Advisory Group: opportunities for change following the 2021 European Society of Cardiology heart failure guidelines

Jelena Čelutkienė
Cardiologist, Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, Vilnius University, Lithuania
Ekaterini Lambrinou
Associate Professor, Department of Nursing, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Tiny Jaarsma
Professor in Caring Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Linköping, Sweden
Denis Janssen
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Patient’s Voice, the Netherlands
Giuseppe Rosano
Consultant Cardiologist and Professor of Cardiology, St George’s University Medical School, UK; President-Elect, Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology

Advocacy Leadership Group: what’s new in international guidelines?

Salvatore Di Somma
Department of Medical Surgery, Sapienza-Università di Roma, Italy
Klaus Edel
Centre of Cardiovascular Diseases, Rotenburg upon Fulda, Germany
Cristina Enjuanes Grau
University Hospital of Bellvitge, Spain
Winfried Klausnitzer
Herzschwäche Deutschland, Germany
Steven Macari
Association Vie Et Cœur, France
Yolanda Rueda
Cardioalianza, Spain
Stefan Störk
University Hospital Würzburg, Germany

 

Funders

The initial report and animation for this project were developed with financial support from CSL Vifor. Subsequent reports were developed with financial support from AstraZeneca.

The Heart Failure Policy Network is an independent, multidisciplinary platform made possible with financial support from AstraZeneca and Roche Diagnostics. The content produced by the Network is not biased toward any specific treatment or therapy. All outputs are guided and endorsed by the Network’s members. All members provide their time for free. The Network is hosted by The Health Policy Partnership .