Cent Eur J Public Health 2006, 14(2):82-85 | DOI: 10.21101/cejph.a3366

Lags in Behavioral Change: A Population Based Comparison of Cardiovascular Risk Behavior in Poland and Sweden

Per Andersson¹, Rickard L. Sjöberg², Marzena Krysa³, Władysław Sidorowicz³, John Öhrvik², Jerzy Leppert²

¹ Department of Caring and Public Health Science, Mälardalen University, S-72123 Västerås, Sweden

² Centre of Clinical Research, Uppsala University, Central Hospital, Västerås, Sweden

³ Health and Welfare Division of the Municipality of Wroclaw City, Wroclaw, Poland

One thousand and twenty Polish men and women and 1,011 Swedish men and women aged 50 and recruited through primary health care took part in a survey relating to their knowledge of health-related behaviour, attitudes to health-related behaviour and self-reported risk behaviour. The results reveal that Poles know as much about cardiovascular risk factors as Swedes, but that Swedes feel that it is more important to change their dietary habits and to influence factors in the working environment to avoid the risk of developing CVD than did Poles. Swedes also displayed less risk behaviour than Poles and more Swedes than Poles had successfully stopped smoking. These findings suggest that differences in stages of health-related behavior that have previously been observed at an individual level may sometimes also be discerned at a national level.

Keywords: knowledge of risk factors, CVD, population-based study, stage-of-change model

Received: September 30, 2005; Revised: February 8, 2006; Accepted: February 8, 2006; Published: June 1, 2006  Show citation