Integration of information about cardiovascular risk factors: how do highly motivated women in a lifestyle intervention programme act and react?
OBJECTIVE
To understand the experience of being at risk and of participating in health interventions. How is information about risk factors handled on an individual level with respect to feeling, thinking and doing?


METHODS
Tape-recorded, open interviews, written out and analysed using a descriptive/analytical method.


METHODS
Selected women who had participated in a lifestyle intervention programme aimed at reducing risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Strømstad, a community of 10 000 inhabitants on the west coast of Sweden.


METHODS
Eight women in the most active group who had had some contact with the project during the whole period 1985-94.


METHODS
The creation of core concepts as a result of close text reading through codes and categories.


RESULTS
Three core concepts in relation to the handling of risk factors were identified: there is no one but yourself to rely on, resisting invasion, and living with incompatibility, based respectively on the subjects' self-efficacy and self-awareness, their ways of maintaining a good life and their trying to understand the risk-factor concept.


CONCLUSIONS
Risk-factor-oriented health interventions focus on disease and create uncertainty as to the relationship between the concepts of risk and disease. The powerful health resources demonstrated by the women in this study to counterbalance the risk pre-occupation suggest changing to health-oriented interventions that focus on individual health resources.
Westerståhl
Anna
A
Department of Primary Health Care, Göteborg University, Sweden. anna.westerstahl@allmed.gu.se
Segesten
Kerstin
K
Björkelund
Cecilia
C
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000209:etiology* / Q000517:prevention & control*; D015444:Exercise / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D015438:Health Behavior; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012648:Self Care / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology*; D020377:Self Efficacy; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden; D014930:Women / Q000193:education* / Q000523:psychology*; D016387:Women's Health