Organizational and community approaches to community-wide prevention of heart disease: The first two years of the pawtucket heart health program

John P. Elder, Sarah A. McGraw, David B. Abrams, Andrea Ferreira, Thomas M. Lasater, Helene Longpre, Gussie S. Peterson, Rick Schwertfeger, Richard A. Carleton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

66 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Pawtucket Heart Health program (PHHP) is a federally funded research and demonstration project for the primary prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) in a community. This article presents a discussion of the first 26 months of this intervention, divided into its three phases. PHHP staff initially approached the intervention city through local organizations to accomplish risk-factor behavior change in the population. After 11 months, PHHP complemented its programs in organizations with activities open to all city residents, in order to accelerate participation by the population. Seven months into this phase, it was decided that community activities should be the major focus of the intervention approach to assure a level of participation adequate to make a measurable impact. The third phase has shown the greatest percentage of public participation, demonstrating the complementary nature of organization and community interventions and of the translation of social learning theory into principles for primary prevention in a community.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)107-117
Number of pages11
JournalPreventive Medicine
Volume15
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1986

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Epidemiology
  • Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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