Health volunteers’ knowledge of cardiovascular disease prevention and healthy lifestyle following a community trial: Isfahan healthy heart program

BACKGROUND: Health volunteers can have a great effect by training the population about prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and lifestyle modification. This study evaluated the health volunteers’ knowledge following the Isfahan Healthy Heart Program (IHHP) that was performed between 2000 and 2006. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, 491 females were selected among health volunteers in the Isfahan and Najafabad districts as intervention areas and Arak as a reference area through 2000-2001 until 2006. They participated in training courses on CVD, its complications, methods of prevention of risk factors control as well healthy lifestyle promotion. The health volunteers’ level of knowledge was assessed before and after training. RESULTS: Before intervention, there was no significant difference between the scores of health volunteers in the intervention and the control regions in terms of knowledge about recognizing the symptoms, complications and prevention of CVD and relevant risk factors and healthy lifestyle. However, their knowledge scores increased significantly in the fields of CVD (β = 0.13, P = 0.04), hypertension (β = 0.18, P = 0.009), healthy nutrition (β = 0.19, P = 0.007), appropriate physical activity (β = 0.17, P = 0.01) and dealing with stress (β = 0.16, P = 0.02) after trainings. CONCLUSION: The 6 year interventional program of IHHP showed that training health volunteers on prevention of CVD, their risk factors and modification of lifestyle continued to be effective even in a long time.