Risks for cardiovascular disease in middle-aged women in different social environments

Background: The importance of the social environment and human life conditions for public health was early recognized in community medicine. Despite major reductions in recent decades, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity for both genders in all European countries. Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to increase our knowledge of factors in the social environment and of individual psychosocial factors that could explain why some women in working ages are affected by cardiovascular diseases. Methods: The Swedish sample comes from the urban population in two major cities in a region in the south-east of Sweden, the Twin cities. According to their social history they could be labelled a “blue-collar” and a “white-collar” city. Cardiovascular morbidity data in all papers for the Twin cities was derived from a computerized population-based administrative Health Care Register (HCR). In Paper IV, we made a comparative study between Sweden and Scotland, the Scottish data comes from the Scottish Health Survey. Results: In Paper I, the cumulative incidence of different cardiovascular diagnoses for younger and also elderly men and women were significantly higher in the population of the blue collar city in all ages and for both sexes. The qualitative interviews of women after an MI, in Paper II, the findings revealed a broad picture of social factors, life circumstances, personalities and, not least, psychosocial factors that are important to middle-aged women who have suffered an MI. Paper III demonstrated that women with a high level of the personality trait “being a Good Girl” reported significantly more psychosocial risk factors for CVD and more commonly report chest pain without seeking medical care, no increased incidence for various CVD-diagnoses were found. The comparative study (Paper IV) clearly showed that Scottish middle-aged women are – relative to Swedish women - particularly affected by a worse profile of CVD risks, even after adjustment for education. Conclusions: The social environment is of importance for cardiovascular risks and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. This has been shown in Swedish Twin cities context and also in comparative studies between Swedish and Scottish women. The thesis gives strong implications for an upstream public health approach initiating long-term community intervention program in the blue collar city and among Scottish middle-aged women