The "Know Your Numbers" Program in Atahualpa

Overview

Persons voluntarily attending the Community Center of the Atahualpa Project during one calendar year will be evaluated by trained personnel to check their cardiovascular health status. A chart with information of healthy behaviors as well as the numbers of the person's blood pressure, fasting glucose, and total cholesterol levels will be given. Persons who sign the informed consent will be visited at their homes after 3 months and than every year up to five years. The idea is to check whether the person followed our advises and if that compliance iis associated with improvement in the cardiovascular status or with a decreased incidence of stroke and ischemic heart disease, when compared with persons who did not attend the community center or those who did not follow our advices.

Campaigns aimed to increase the level of awareness on cardiovascular risk factors may encourage people to change their lifestyles and to increase compliance with medication. This intervention has been called the "know your numbers program" and has been tested in developed countries. No study have evaluated the efficacy of this program in reducing the prevalence of ischemic heart disease and stroke on the long-term follow-up, and this program has not been applied to people living in rural areas of developing countries. During the study years, a community center of the Atahualpa Project will be open and stuffed with trained paramedical personnel that will attend people that voluntarily look for information. All these persons will be invited to participate in the "know your numbers" program, and those who sign the informed consent form will be enrolled in the program. Recruitment will be during one calendar year to assure the inclusion of a significant sample size of the population. As part of the initial visit, the CVH status of all individuals will be evaluated. Thereafter, persons will be informed on their health status and the best ways to improve it according to specific situations. Those who merit treatment for a given condition will be instructed to go to the physician for proper advice and prescription. A chart containing information on stroke and ischemic heart disease warning signs, as well as on healthy behaviors will be provided to all persons. All enrolled persons will be visited at their homes three months after the initial visit to the community center, and then, every year up to five years. We will evaluate whether the person followed our advices or the reasons for poor compliance. Persons will be asked to tell us if they remember the ischemic heart disease and stroke warning signs. Anthropometric parameters, blood pressure, total cholesterol and fasting glucose levels will be recorder at every visit and, again, any specific advice to improve "their numbers" or to seek for medical attention will be given. By the end of the study, the investigators will be able to correlate the CVH status of the person as well as the occurrence of vascular outcomes or death according to whether our advices were followed or not. Statistical analysis will be directed to refute the null hypothesis that this intervention does not improve the CVH and does not reduce the risk of stroke or ischemic heart disease