Community-wide cardiovascular prevention program in rural Maine a success
A long-term cardiovascular risk reduction program in Maine that utilized community-wide interventions successfully reduced morbidity and mortality rates, according to a study published in JAMA.
The 40-year observational study involved residents of Franklin County, a rural, low-income population of 22,444 in 1970, and used the preceding decade as a baseline and compared this county to others in Maine as well as state averages, according to the study.
The intervention entailed community-wide programs that targeted hypertension, cholesterol and smoking in addition to diet and physical activity. It was sponsored by several community organizations, including local hospitals and clinicians, according to the study.
Over the 40-year study, more than 150,000 individual county resident contacts occurred. As cardiovascular risk factors programs were added, health indicators improved. Specifically:
- Hypertension control improved by 24.7 percent from 1975 to 1978
- Elevated cholesterol control had an absolute increase of 28.5 percent from 1986 to 2010
- Smoking quit rates improved from 48.5 percent to 69.5 percent (1996-2000)
- Hospitalizations per capita were less than expected between 1994 and 2006.
- Franklin was the only Maine county with consistently lower adjusted mortality than predicted over the time periods
“Further studies are needed to assess the generalizability of such programs to other US county populations, especially rural ones, and to other parts of the world,” according to the study.