Co-design the CV population health roadmap

Co-design a clear, prioritized roadmap to advance cardiovascular population health.

The CARDIO4Cities population health roadmap is a strategic plan designed to improve CV risk factor control in city populations by guiding early detection and access, improving healthcare quality, and strengthening the key enablers. It is co-designed with relevant stakeholders and guided by a data-driven approach.

During this co-design step, participants should review the current situation in the cascade of care (step 1), add their own perspective on barriers and opportunities, and agree on the most important and urgent interventions. This can then be turned into a roadmap with timelines, responsibilities and required resources, either during the same workshop, or subsequently.

The workshop should be structured with plenary components (to create a common understanding of the task at hand) and potentially break-out groups (to maximize opportunities for tapping into participants’ expertise and creativity). Depending on local needs and the profiles of stakeholders attending the workshop, the break-out groups could be focused on individual risk factors, stages of the cascade of care, or perspectives of different stakeholder groups (health system, healthcare providers, civil society).

Be sure to capture broad sets of ideas in brainstorming or design-thinking approaches. Interventions should include those validated as part of CARDIO4Cities (CARDIO4Cities in Practice), as well as other or even newly designed interventions, technologies or partnerships that fit the city context.

After identifying a broad set of interventions, assess their feasibility, cost, expected impact, and sustainability by embedding them into existing systems with long-term funding. Use an intervention evaluation framework or the CARDIO4Cities simulator to prioritize interventions and converge on a specific set of interventions to be included in the population health roadmap.

To turn a list of prioritized interventions into a population health roadmap, create a detailed implementation plan for each intervention that includes clearly defined objectives, assigned responsibilities across lead and supporting organizations, estimated budgets with identified funding sources, and realistic timelines with key milestones. Develop a phased rollout schedule that prioritizes high-impact, feasible actions while allowing room for iterative learning. Secure cross-sector partnerships – healthcare providers, community organizations, urban planners, and policymakers – by formalizing roles and commitments.

Keep the roadmap practical and focused. Identify key high-impact interventions rather than trying to fix everything at once. Plan for regular review and adaptation based on progress, data and feedback. By combining data with information from the communities (on lived experience), and by involving all relevant stakeholders from the start, the roadmap will not only be technically sound but also widely supported and ready for implementation.

The roadmap will provide essential information to the Operational Committee to support and coordinate implementation (step 5). Identify ways to collect the minimum essential set of data to measure progress and outcomes by reviewing possible sources for these indicators. Review baseline data, and establish feedback loops to track outcomes and impact, adapt to emerging challenges, and ensure accountability. Use of data can be enhanced significantly by using intuitive dashboards. A structured roadmap will transform strategic priorities into actionable steps that drive measurable improvements in population health.

The final approval of the population health roadmap should come from the Steering Committee.