Abstract
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 the 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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 141-155 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Annals of Medicine |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1989 |
Funding
The author's research presented here was supported by the American Heart Association, Chicago Health Research Foundation, Chicago Heart Association, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; also by CIBA-GElGY, CPC International (Best Foods), Nabisco Brands, the Marsteller Company (Flora Information Service), and individual donors.
Keywords
- Cardiovascular
- Cholesterol
- Coronary heart disease
- Dietary
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine