Prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) will be enhanced by controlling hypertension, reducing blood cholesterol, maintaining normal weight, increasing physical activity, reducing smoking, and having a healthy diet (American Heart Association, 1994). Understanding how to achieve these important public health aims requires an understanding of the behavioral factors involved in prevention. Behavioral risk factors remain the single most preventable cause of human illness and suffering. The UNC Alumni Heart Study is ideally suited to explore the associations between and among these important behavioral risk factors, and to understand how personality, in particular individual differences in hostility and depression act to determine individuals' risk factor behaviors, and to answer important questions about the role of hostility and psychosocial factors in CHD risk during the middle years.
The specific aims of the proposed research are: [1.] Continue surveillance of the members of the UNC Alumni Heart Study by extending the follow-up for an additional five year period in order to test the major hypothesis of the study: that hostility and related psychosocial factors are meaningfully involved in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease (CHD). [2.] To study how hostility and other psychosocial factors are related to each other and how they contribute to CHD risk. In particular, we will analyze data already in hand in order to test hypotheses about the role of psychosocial factors in weight parameters, dietary practices and the contribution of spouse hostility to coronary risk.
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