Knowing your cholesterol can start an important conversation, but the numbers alone do not determine the next step.
Cardiovascular risk, treatment benefits and potential side effects, lifestyle changes, and each patient’s priorities all help shape the plan. During National Cholesterol Education Month, the National Forum for Heart Disease & Stroke Prevention and a coalition of expert partners have released an updated suite of five SHARED decision-making guides.
Developed with input from healthcare professionals and patient advocates, the free, plain-language resources support informed, shared decision-making.
Each guide includes sample questions and talking points, a treatment-planning worksheet, and educational materials that can support conversations before, during, and after an appointment.
A practical framework for shared decisions
The guides organize conversations around the six-step SHARED approach:
- S – Seek your patient’s participation: Frame the treatment decision as a choice and invite the patient to participate.
- H – Help your patient explore and compare: Discuss lifestyle changes and treatment options using plain language.
- A – Assess your patient’s values and preferences: Ask about the patient’s goals, concerns, and treatment preferences.
- R – Reach a decision with your patient: Agree on a treatment strategy or next step that reflects the patient’s needs.
- E – Evaluate your patient’s decision: Plan follow-up to monitor progress, address concerns, and adjust the plan when needed.
- D – Decide which local resources will effectively support your patient: Connect patients with additional information and members of the healthcare team.
Five guides for important cholesterol conversations
The updated guides address broad cardiovascular risk as well as specific cholesterol-related decisions:
- ASCVD prevention: Supports discussions about cardiovascular risk factors and lifestyle and treatment options that reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and other complications.
- Statin treatment planning: Helps patients and healthcare professionals consider overall cardiovascular risk, potential benefits and side effects, lifestyle changes, and patient preferences when discussing statin therapy.
- Statins and other cholesterol-lowering therapies: Provides a framework for discussing a variety of options for lowering cholesterol.
- Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH): Explains inherited high cholesterol and supports conversations about early detection and screening for family members.
- Lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] management: Explains this inherited risk factor, the role of testing at least once in adulthood, and ways to manage overall cardiovascular risk when Lp(a) is elevated.
Put the guides to work
Advocacy organizations, clinician associations, individual practitioners, clinics, healthcare systems, and public health agencies can use the guides in several ways:
- Support patient visits. Share the guides with primary care practices, cardiology clinics, pharmacists, and other members of the healthcare team.
- Help patients prepare. Provide the questions, worksheets, and patient education materials before appointments so patients can identify what matters most to them.
- Extend community education. Equip community health workers, patient advocates, and educators with resources they can share through programs, newsletters, websites, and social media.
- Connect with September observances: Use the guides during National Cholesterol Education Month, FH Awareness Day (Sept. 24), and World Heart Day (Sept. 29).
Access and download the guides at natforum.org/shared-decision.
