Preventive cardiologyEffectiveness of a Volunteer-Delivered Lifestyle Modification Program for Reducing Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors
Section snippets
Methods
The study was observational and evaluated the pre- to postbiometric changes of 5,070 subjects who had self-selected to participate in a CHIP program. A total of 176 CHIP programs (mean group size 29, range 3 to 228) were conducted at 136 sites throughout North America from January 2006 to October 2009. The Avondale College human research ethics committee approved the study (approval number 20:10:07).
The CHIP programs were facilitated by volunteer directors, sourced primarily through the
Results
The 5,070 participants (mean age 57.2 ± 12.9 years) included 1,694 men (57.8 ± 13.0 years) and 3,372 women (56.9 ± 12.9 years). Of these participants, 210 (4.1%) self-reported a history of myocardial infarction, 111 (2.1%) had undergone bypass surgery, 101 (2.0%) had experienced a stroke, and 439 (8.7%) had a history of cancer.
The mean changes from baseline to after the intervention for all participants combined are presented in Table 1. Significant reductions were recorded in all the risk
Discussion
Although the study results represent observational data in that the participants were self-selected and no control group was included, the results are nonetheless noteworthy. Clearly, significant reductions in body weight and CVD risk factors can be achieved through a lifestyle intervention program delivered in a community setting by volunteers. Furthermore, those with the greatest risk benefited the most. Harnessing the energy of volunteer directors, who need not be health professionals,
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Community-based cardiovascular disease prevention programmes and cardiovascular risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis
2021, Public HealthCitation Excerpt :There was a significant publication bias that was evident via a funnel plot inspection and the results of Begg's test (P = 006) and Egger's test (P = 0.013). The meta-analysis of 13 community-based CVD prevention programmes21,23,30,32,36,41,43,45,46,52,53,56,58 was accompanied with a sharp decrease in serum levels of LDL-C (WMD = −8.71 mg/dl, 95% CI: −12.50, −4.92; P < 0.001) with evidence of high heterogeneity between studies (I2 = 95.6%, P-heterogeneity <0.001; Fig. 4). Subgroup analyses revealed that the decrease in serum levels of LDL-C was independent of CVD prevention programme location, community setting, programme duration and study design (Supplementary Table S5).
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