Mortality impact of an integrated community cardiovascular health program

Preventing cardiovascular disease through community interventions makes theoretical sense but has been difficult to demonstrate. We set out to determine whether a community cardiovascular health program had an impact on mortality.

Program evaluation plus ecologic observational analysis of program encounters and mortality rates with external comparisons.

Franklin County and two comparison counties in rural Maine.

Program encountered >50% of regional adults, broadly distributed by site, gender, and age.

From 1974 to 1994, a community program, integrated with primary medical care and staffed by professional nurses, provided education, screening, counseling, referral, tracking, and follow-up for cardiovascular risk factors.

Age-adjusted mortality rates (total, heart, coronary, cerebrovascular, cancer) for three counties and Maine, plus annual program encounters.

Relative to Maine, the Franklin heart disease death rate was 0.97 at baseline (1960-1969; 95% confidence interval, 0.91 to 1.03), 0.91 during the program (0.85 to 0.97), 0.83 during the 11 years of program growth (0.78 to 0.88), but 1.0 during the 10 years of decreasing encounters. Franklin's total death rate was 1.01 at baseline, 0.95 during the program (0.92 to 0.98), and 0.90 during program growth (0.86 to 0. 94). Results were similar for coronary disease, stroke, and cancer. Relative death rates did not fall in either comparison county. Nurse-client encounters totaled 120,280 over 21 years. Relative to Maine, heart disease death rates correlated inversely with program encounters (r = -0.53) but not with unemployment or physician supply.

Integrated with primary medical care, a comprehensive, nurse-mediated community cardiovascular health program in rural Maine has been associated with significant time-dependent and dose-dependent reductions in cardiovascular and total mortality.