Dr. Meagan Oslund is co-PI on the new “Connecting Community Partners: Breaking Down Barriers to Heart Health” partnership with the Tennessee Department of Health. Photo by Angela Foster.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing is partnering with the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) to expand access to cardiovascular care for older adults in rural Southeast Tennessee.
Building on the success of the University’s MobileMOC program, the new initiative—titled “Connecting Community Partners: Breaking Down Barriers to Heart Health”—is designed to connect senior centers, local providers and community resources to help older adults monitor and manage their blood pressure while learning practical ways to maintain heart health.
The initiative aligns with the state’s cardiovascular health priorities by addressing barriers to care and promoting equitable access to prevention and follow-up resources—particularly for older adults in rural communities.
The project is led by Dr. Kristi Wick, UC Foundation associate professor and Vicky B. Gregg Chair in Gerontology, and Dr. Meagan Oslund, assistant professor of practice in the UTC School of Nursing.
“This grant is a complement to MobileMOC,” Oslund said. “We already provide really great services, but this is adding an emphasis on cardiovascular health to the services we already offer.”
Launched in March 2025, the MobileMOC medical outreach clinic is a custom-built mobile health unit operated by the School of Nursing. The clinic brings interdisciplinary care—including nursing, occupational therapy, social work and public health—to 10 counties across Southeast Tennessee.
MobileMOC is part of the broader ROAD MAP initiative, which connects UTC faculty, students and community partners to address health disparities and build a stronger rural health care workforce.
Oslund said the new TDH grant focuses on empowering rural residents—particularly older adults—to take charge of their heart health.
“This grant is about looking at heart health from a three-pronged approach—self-measurement, community resources, and education about lifestyle changes,” Oslund said. “Yes, patients are taking their blood pressure, but if it’s high, then what? So we want to connect the patient to the right resource for a timely evaluation.”
Wick said access to timely care is challenging when living in rural Tennessee given health care workforce shortages, hospital closures and lack of social resources such as healthy nutrition and transportation.
This grant will help connect people to quality care and resources faster along with providing follow-up to ensure health issues are addressed long-term.
“Cardiovascular health requires all-inclusive lifestyle modifications to mitigate risk of poor health outcomes such as stroke or death,” Oslund said.
A key element of the project is a closed-loop referral system, ensuring that every screening connects back to the right care team.
Beginning in January 2026, blood pressure monitoring kiosks will be installed in senior centers in Bradley, McMinn, Meigs, Polk and Rhea counties. Each kiosk will allow users to check their blood pressure as often as they like. Readings that indicate risk will trigger referrals for follow-up care.
Data from each kiosk will be integrated into MobileMOC’s electronic health record system, enabling the team to track outcomes and assess the long-term impact across participating counties.
Oslund said nurse practitioners from the MobileMOC team will visit the same senior centers that house the kiosks, providing blood pressure follow-up and heart health education. Monthly programs hosted by a MobileMOC community health worker will address topics such as stress, sleep, smoking cessation, nutrition and exercise.
“We actually have an OT capstone student coming in and working with our nurse and community health worker for a more well-rounded approach to each of those topics as part of that interdisciplinary team,” she said.
Oslund, an occupational therapist who received her Doctor of Occupational Therapy degree from UTC in 2021, joined the MobileMOC team in January 2025 as the interprofessional education and practice coordinator.
She previously spent nearly four years as an occupational therapist at CHI Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, specializing in stroke care in the neuro intensive care unit. That experience shaped her focus on prevention and accessibility.
“At Memorial, I spent a lot of time in the neuro ICU,” she explained. “You see older adults with strokes and brain bleeds and all these kinds of things. I would get so frustrated that there were all of these older adults who lived in these rural counties and they had no follow-up, nowhere to go for resources or therapy. So I’ve shifted my mindset to how we can prevent this catastrophe from happening in the first place.”
That perspective led her to UTC’s interprofessional health initiatives.
“I could just see the benefit,” she said. “If you have education, nutrition, social work, OT and nursing on the front end of things, we can prevent some of these catastrophic events from happening later on.”
Learn more
