Towards cardiovascular health

This paper - in tribute to Martti Karvonen not only as researcher, teacher, organizer, friend, but also as statesman and strategist - focusses on several major contemporary strategic issues central for advancing cardiovascular health. These include: 1. the importance of the North Karelia Project emphasis on mass prevention in the community, for combatting the cardiovascular disease epidemic; 2. the extensive data base for the population-wide strategy for CVD prevention; 3. the important independent contribution of dietary lipid, particularly dietary cholesterol to cardiovascular disease risk; 4. the important role of diet - especially high dietary Na and high dietary Na/K, caloric imbalance with consequent obesity, and heavy alcohol intake - in the causation of the mass occurrence in the population of blood pressure levels above optimal and of frank hypertension; 5. the ability to improve population life styles and patterns of life-style-related risk factors; 6. the relation of improvements in life style and life-style-related risk factors, achieved to date in countries like Finland and the U.S.A., to the declines in cardiovascular disease mortality in these countries.