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Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Health Promotion |
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Successful prevention of noncommunicable diseases: 25 year experiences with North Karelia Project in Finland
Abstracts
This paper describes the experiences and results of 25 years of noncommunicable disease prevention in Finland in the framework of the North Karelia Project: from demonstration project to national activity. The successful experiences emphasize the need for theory based sustained activity, within a national policy framework. The paper discusses, not only the marked changes in target risk factors and reduction in NCD rates in the population, but also the general experiences: constraints and keys for success. Some general recommendations and conclusions are drawn.
Introduction
Noncommunicable diseases and especially cardiovascular diseases (CVD) represent the major health burden in the industrialized countries and a rapidly growing problem in the developing countries. At the same time they are an area where major health gains can be achieved. In most of the developed world three out of four deaths are due to CVD, cancer, accidents and other violent causes. Globally CVD is responsible for every third death and coronary heart disease (CHD) is already the number one killer in the world (ref 1).
Extensive medical research has, during the last few decades, been carried out to learn about the causes and mechanisms of these noncommunicable diseases. Research has involved large epidemiological studies within and between populations, basic biochemical and animal studies, intervention trials and large-scale community-based preventive studies. This research has clearly shown that CVDs or events leading to them have their roots in unhealthy lifestyles or adverse physical and social environments.
Such factors as unhealthy nutrition, smoking, physical inactivity, excess use of alcohol and psychosocial stress are among major lifestyle issues.
Although much will certainly still be learnt in the future, very much is thus known already to serve prevention. Actually so much is known that the main question for NCD prevention is not "what should be done", but "how should it be done". The key question is, how can the existing knowledge best be applied for effective prevention in real life.
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Abstracts & Introduction
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