Isfahan Healthy Heart Program: A Comprehensive Integrated Community-Based Program for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Control. Design, Methods and Initial Experience

1 Isfahan Healthy Heart Program (IHHP) is a five to six year comprehensive integrated community-based program for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) prevention and control via reducing CVD risk factors and improvement of cardiovascular healthy behavior in target population. IHHP started late in 1999 and will be finished in 2005-2006. Primary survey was done to collect baseline data from interventional (Isfahan and Najafabad) and reference (Arak) communities. In a two stage sampling method, we randomly selected 5 to 10 percent of households from randomly selected clusters. Then individuals aged 19 years old were selected for entering the survey. This way, data from 12600 individuals (6300 in interventional counties and 6300 in the reference county) was collected and stratified due to their living area (urban vs. rural) and different age and sex groups. The samples underwent a 30-minute interview to complete validated questionnaires containing questions on demographic, socioeconomic status, smoking behavior, physical activity, nutritional habits an