 There's no reason why it couldn't be done at golfing outings. You can take it to a basketball game. With high school athletic programs, it seems to work out very well. We want to do more of it in our local community. Your main priority is your health. Hey, let's do something about this before something happens. Stroke is a serious problem. Communities across the country use many ways to get the word out about high blood pressure and stroke prevention. One effective way to reach large numbers of people is at their favorite sporting events. This program is known as Strike Out Stroke, but it doesn't just apply to baseball. It's applicable to any community. Small communities, large communities. The sports theme could be done at major league baseball games. We're doing it at community high school games. It could be done at little league games. Anywhere where people congregate to watch sporting events would be an ideal avenue for a community sports outreach program. Stroke is the third-largest killer of American adults. Getting important health messages regarding cardiovascular disease to those in greatest need is a formidable but not impossible challenge. One way to do this is to organize activities around sporting events. First, analyze your sports community and contact the appropriate people within those organizations. If it is high school or college level, coordinate with the school's athletic director. Most professional teams have a community relations department set up to handle outreach programs. Next, determine a budget. The amount of fundraising and volunteer hours you have available will determine the project's scope. Larger projects will afford printed materials such as fans, banners, t-shirts, and educational materials. And it's important to involve the media. Public service announcements or public interest stories are excellent tools for promoting community events. Hi, I'm Mark Mackinmore of the Baltimore Orioles. Press kits also help pique media interest. What we try to do is to convey a community ownership so that the medical community in a given area is involved. In our case, the high school students, the high schools, the population as a whole is involved and it's their program. Baltimore's inner city has one of the highest incidents of hypertension in the country. The public health community needed to mobilize. We find out exactly what they were doing as far as high blood pressure treatment and prevention. And mobilize they did. Health coordinators rallied the Baltimore Orioles franchise and local merchants to launch a massive screening and outreach campaign. Trained volunteers went to many of the city's most popular gathering spots including barbershops, grocery stores, rec centers, and pharmacies. There are a couple things, community programs and health departments, voluntary agencies should know. Many sporting teams are actively looking for programs to reach out into the community. In addition to providing entertainment, they're also interested in helping with public service events. So they are amenable to these kinds of activities. Most of the athletes and stuff want to do something like this, to give something back to the community because there's so many things that the fans themselves have done so much with the ballpark and athletes really appreciate those kind of things. But you don't need to live in a big city or have a professional ball team to use sports as a way of reaching people. Central South Carolina's outreach program is an example of what can be done on a smaller scale. Well we don't have professional major league baseball and major league football in our areas and a particular area that we were concerned about were the rural areas, the small areas that really have nothing, but they do have high school football. And now we've expanded from the one school where at this point we've now trained students at over 35 schools and expect to expand up to 65 and 70 by this year's end. Each program will have different elements depending on the community's needs. Nearly all require the help of volunteers. Adults and students can be trained by health departments to take blood pressures, deliver information or develop referral and follow-up programs. The high school students have just really taken it over as a fun project. This is something they can actually do. They can actually take blood pressure measurements and serve their community in a very important way. The students feel great about it and now they're out taking more and more blood pressures and it's just a very positive thing from all sides. The thing that I like about it is it gives kids an introduction into what medicine is all about, what the health profession is all about. A lot of these kids never knew that anything such as hypertension even existed. So they get a chance to learn how to take high blood pressure, they get a chance to learn how to talk to patients and so it's a good early introduction into the profession. One key element of all outreach programs is involving the medical community. Not only with screenings, but with important follow-up care as well. I would first advise whoever's going to put a program on like this to seek the support of the local medical society or the local medical auxiliary or whatever. Explain to them what you're trying to do. Also explain to them that in order for the program to be successful they need to have input from them and they need to cooperate. And by that I mean if we send a card to those doctors saying that this person was someone who was screened through this program that the doctor is going to pay attention to it and actually follow up with the patient. Pulling together a major health campaign is not an easy task. There are many challenges and much coordination necessary, but there is support. The sports guide offers ideas on organizing events at all levels. There is always a great deal of satisfaction and sense of achievement in a community that participates. I hope that people become aware that stroke is a serious problem, that high blood pressure is a serious problem, and that they're broken or somewhat preventable if people change some of their lifestyle behaviors. Even if we get one person into the doctor's office and keep him from having a stroke, this program would have been successful, at least for my standard. For a copy of the sports guide or additional information on developing an outreach program in your community, contact the NHLBI Information Center. Post Office Box 30105. Bethesda, Maryland, 208-24-0105. Or phone 301-251-1222.