Care Coaches for Chronic Conditions (4C’s)

The mission of Care Coaches for Chronic Conditions (4Cs) is to help patients navigate the important lifestyle changes needed to better manage their chronic disease. Pairs of first and second-year students conduct counseling and goal-setting sessions with patients who have been hospitalized for heart failure exacerbation.

We seek to improve patients’ understanding of their diagnosis, help them identify an area of improvement, and facilitate their setting a SMART goal to address it. We are also creating a bank of resources that we can provide to patients, including low-salt recipe videos that we will be making with the BMC Teaching Kitchen. Through these interventions, we strive to reduce the rates of readmission for heart failure exacerbation.