Cardiovascular disease occurrence in two close but different social environments

We focused on the total population in two neighbour and equally sized cities with a population of around 135 000 inhabitants each. These twin cities represent two different social environments in the same Swedish county. According to their social history they could be labelled a "blue-collar" and a "white-collar" city. Morbidity data for the two cities was derived from an administrative health care register based on medical records assigned by the physicians at both hospitals and primary care. The morbidity data presented are cumulative incidence rates and the data on mortality for ischemic heart diseases is based on official Swedish statistics.The cumulative incidence of different cardiovascular diagnoses for younger and also elderly men and women revealed significantly differences for studied cardiovascular diagnoses. The occurrence rates were in all aspects highest in the population of the "blue-collar" twin city for both sexes.This study revealed that there are significant differences in risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality between the populations in the studied different social environments. These differences seem to be profound and stable over time and thereby give implication for public health policy to initiate a community intervention program in the "blue-collar" twin city.In Sweden mortality from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) gradually increased from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s, when this trend reached a plateau during the 1970s and thereafter in the beginning of the 1980s decreased for both men and women with 50% the last two decades in Sweden as in other industrialised countries [1,2]. This decline in cardiovascular mortality could be explained by two factors: the risk of developing heart infarction has decreased due to better lifestyle and the chance of surviving a heart attack has increased [3-5]. Both incidence of and mortality due to CHD are today significantly higher in subjects with low socio-economic status [6]. In