Key result
Community interventions using population-wide strategies are feasible and associated with positive impacts on lifestyles, cardiovascular risk factors, and reduced cardiovascular mortality.
Why the study?
Do community-based population-wide strategies reduce cardiovascular risk factors and mortality in the general population?
Do community-based population-wide strategies reduce cardiovascular risk factors and mortality in the general population?
Community-based interventions are feasible and effective in improving lifestyles, reducing cardiovascular risk factors, and lowering cardiovascular mortality.
Supports community strategies for CV risk reduction; leaves open need for RCTs to confirm causality and guide implementation.
The concept of community intervention in the field of cardiovascular disease prevention was introduced in the late sixties and early seventies. The WHO European Collaborative Trial in the multifactorial prevention of coronary heart disease used communities (factories) in a traditional controlled trial. The intervention used in this trial was an extension of a medical care model with preventive elements. The first two major community intervention projects in CVD prevention the North Karelia Project and the Stanford Heart Disease Prevention Programme were the basis of further WHO and NHLBI coordinated projects. They have used community-based population-wide strategies including existing community leadership, social networks, mass campaigns and extensive direct education for the general population. In the evaluation of those projects quasi-experimental models are used because “perfect experiments” are not possible. Some projects have proven the feasibility of community intervention and its positive impact on lifestyles and cardiovascular risk factors in a whole population and that such a development is associated with reduced cardiovascular mortality rates.In 1968 Dr G. Rose sent a letter to the World Health Organization requesting WHO to play an important part in the initiation of controlled trials to evaluate preventive measures for IHD, particularly by promoting communications between active interventionists and scientifically based epidemiologists.
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I Gyárfás (1992) conducted a review in Cardiovascular disease. Community-based population-wide strategies was evaluated on Cardiovascular risk factors and mortality rates. Community interventions using population-wide strategies are feasible and associated with positive impacts on lifestyles, cardiovascular risk factors, and reduced cardiovascular mortality.
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