An. Nafziger et al., Design issues in the combination of international data from two rural community cardiovascular intervention programs, SCAND J P H, 2001, pp. 33-39
Citations number
12
Categorie Soggetti
Public Health & Health Care Science","Envirnomentale Medicine & Public Health
Objectives: To compare and contrast two rural cardiovascular community inte
rvention programs (CCIP) in northern Sweden and the US by discussing the me
thods used to select and combine similar data from two separately designed
and implemented CCIP in order to describe and evaluate their effectiveness
in reducing cardiovascular risk.
Methods: Two rural intervention populations and their reference populations
were compared. A comparison was made of the intensity and duration of the
intervention programs using an overall intervention intensity score. Popula
tion-based surveys were conducted at 5-year intervals in both countries. Th
e methods used for data pooling and comparison are described. A description
of statistical analyses using a mixed analysis of variance model is provid
ed.
Results: The data were pooled, taking into consideration comparable ages. N
ew variables were created in order to define the relationship between simil
ar data that did not permit direct comparison.
Conclusions: Combination and comparison of international data from two prog
rams allowed evaluation of community intervention programs that were develo
ped independently for similar communities. The effectiveness of interventio
ns can be compared using such methods.