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N.C. Stroke Association Unveils New Web Site during Stroke Awareness Month
North Carolinians can now access NCStroke.org as a comprehensive resource for stroke prevention, education and post-stroke information.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (May 17, 2023) — In honor of May as National Stroke Awareness month and in recognition of stroke’s devastating impact on North Carolinians, the N.C. Stroke Association (NCSA) has unveiled its new Web site (www.ncstroke.org) as a comprehensive resource for stroke prevention and education.
“Stroke remains a huge medical problem in North Carolina — causing much human and economic suffering and hardship,” said Charles Tegeler, M.D., vice president of NCSA and director of the Stroke Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. “There have been great strides in acute treatment and teaching people about warning signs, but people forget that most strokes are preventable. Now is the time to turn our emphasis toward identifying risk factors that allow for health and medical interventions to prevent stroke from happening in the first place. NCSA’s new Web site along with its centerpiece programs for communities and hospitals provide a wealth of information on everything from assessing risk factors and preventing stroke to information on after-stroke care and resources for caregivers.”
North Carolina is part of the nation’s “Stroke Belt,” with some counties in the state having a death rate from stroke that is twice as high as the national average. The non-profit NCSA assists N.C. hospitals in broadening their reach through stroke programs and protocols, addressing stroke prevention and education through its Stroke Risk Identification Program, and education and post-stroke services through its Beyond the Hospital program. In addition, the NCSA Partnership Grant Program assists N.C. hospitals in funding these programs in their communities.
“NCSA provides communities and hospitals with turnkey, transportable, evidence-based programs to reduce the incidence and impact of stroke through screening, education and follow-up,” Dr. Tegeler said. “These are cost-efficient, effective programs in an era of shrinking resources in which we want to -more- North Carolina Stroke Association/page 2 make sure that programs are appropriate and effective. Beyond the Hospital is the first widely-available program in the state that collects objective outcomes data on stroke patients after discharge, thus allowing hospitals to evaluate the data and improve the quality and effectiveness of their stroke protocols based on these outcomes.”
NCSA’s Stroke Risk Identification program has screened more than 25,000 people across the state, including areas such as Stanly County, located in the Sandhills region of North Carolina. “Back in 1999, our stroke mortality rate in Stanly County was extremely high — 113 people per 100,000 compared to the N.C. rate at that time of about 78 per 100,000,” said Margaret Rudisill, R.N., program coordinator for NCSA and director of Performance Management at Stanly Regional Medical Center. “Our hospital felt it was very important to make a commitment to our community by offering outreach programs on stroke risk factors and symptoms, as well as developing a protocol for an inpatient emergency response. We started doing screenings in the community with NCSA’s tool to educate and identify people who were at high risk of stroke. By combining that with an inpatient treatment protocol of administering tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) within four hours of stroke symptom onset, we have reduced our stroke death rate to 58 per 100,000.”
Not only are stroke death rates high in North Carolina, but stroke is a leading preventable cause of adult disability, affecting language, cognition and motor function, often placing a heavy burden on stroke patients and caregivers. The direct and indirect cost of stroke in North Carolina is estimated at more than $1.05 billion per year.
“The average lifetime cost of taking care of one stroke patient in the United States is more than $140,000,” Rudisill said. “Stroke has a devastating physical and emotional impact, as well as a significant financial burden. That is why the prevailing motto among health professionals is: ‘The best way to treat a stroke is to prevent one from happening.” Through NCSA and the ncstroke.org, we are working to fulfill that mission.”
About the N.C. Stroke Association
The North Carolina Stroke Association is a 501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1998 by a group of physicians and lay people who saw the need to address the state’s increasing prevalence of stroke and its attendant disabilities. With operational seed money from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, NCSA began to fulfill its mission to reduce the incidence and impact of stroke in North Carolina through collaborations to facilitate screening, education, outcome assessments and advocacy. For more information, visit www.ncstroke.org.
