ASK
Bring the pregnancy history into the room.Ask about hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, gestational diabetes, preterm delivery, placental or fetal complications, and what happened after delivery—without assuming one event explains everything.
A HEART RESERVE NATIONAL INITIATIVE
The pregnancy ended. The information did not.
ASK · RECORD · RESPOND is a practical campaign to help women and healthcare teams carry pregnancy history forward into midlife heart care—without turning history into destiny.
RECORD
Keep the information where future care can find it.Place the essential history in the longitudinal medical record, problem context, referral, and patient-held summary. Record what is known; do not manufacture precision where records are incomplete.
RESPOND
Turn remembered history into proportionate care.Use the history to support appropriate screening, risk-factor care, education, referral, and follow-up—matched to the individual and the clinician’s judgment.
The missing handoff
Obstetric information is often clinically important long after obstetric care ends.
A woman can remember that something went wrong in pregnancy and still have no concise language, accessible record, or clear next question years later.
This initiative creates a simple handoff between past pregnancy care and present cardiovascular prevention. It does not label every woman high risk. It makes relevant history visible enough for a qualified clinician to decide what it means in context.
Pilot before scale
A small implementation test with national potential.
Begin in one practice with roughly 100–200 eligible visits, or in three diverse sites with a combined 300–600 visits. Learn what teams can actually ask, record, and act on before expanding the campaign.
Set up
Agree on wording, workflow, privacy, training, eligibility, and aggregate measures.
Use it
Run the prompt and patient tool in real visits. Capture completion and workflow friction.
Sustain
Refine the handoff, repeat training, and decide whether the model is ready to spread.
Measure implementation—not promised health outcomes.
- Eligible visits in which pregnancy history was asked
- Records with a usable, retrievable pregnancy-history entry
- Appropriate education, follow-up, or referral documented
- Patient understanding and clinician workflow burden
- Missing-data, equity, language, and privacy issues
Who can help build the bridge
Designed for shared ownership.
Test the workflow and record handoff.
Reach women before and between visits.
Review language and help clinicians use it accurately.
Strengthen evaluation, equity, and implementation design.
The first ask
Review one small tool. Test one real workflow.
No organization is presented as a partner, reviewer, or endorser without written permission for the exact language.