Prof. Nehama Aviran,
Prof. Oz Almog,
Ms. Shiran Bord,
Prof. Gerald Brook,
Mrs. Lilach Berkovich,
Dr. Anat Gesser-Edelsburg,
Dr. George Ghrayeb,
Dr. Gary Ginsberg,
Prof. Manfred Green,
Dr. Rachel Dahan,
Dr. Michael Dolgin,
Mrs. Riki Tesler,
Dr. Naama Constantini,
Dr. Shira Zalber-Sagi,
Dr. Ciporah Tadmor
This is a community-based chronic disease prevention program targeted to impact positively on the known risk factors and thereby reducing the incidence, prevalence, and mortality from chronic diseases and consequently reducing the spiraling costs of health care, while promoting the health, productivity, and quality of life of the population. It is expected that a successful conclusion of the program will lead to a change in national health policies placing emphasis on disease prevention and health promotion.
The program will consist of a longitudinal field study in a medium-size Israeli town where an intensive and comprehensive program will be implemented on the individual, family, and community levels. The program falls in the realm of primary prevention which will focus on individuals at high risk for a physical disease, who have not yet been affected by the condition to be prevented. The objective of the field study is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the program in reducing high risk behavior such as smoking, obesity, poor nutrition habits, sedentary lifestyle and stress, in order to prevent such chronic diseases as high blood pressure diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.
Over the past two years the first stage of the program has been completed in which the intervention program has been prepared in great detail by a team of experts. The preparation phase included among others: the formulation of the comprehensive intervention programs, selection of the communities (for intervention and for control), ethnographic studies, formulation of the questionnaires to be used for the baseline survey, media studies, telephone surveys, focus groups, documentations for submission to the Helsinki Committee ( which must approve any research on human subjects) etc.
The preparation stage of the program has been assembled into a 1200 page two volumes book presenting the theoretical background, the result from the field studies, the methodological aspect of the program, the intervention protocols, budget and timeline, and a battery of questionnaires designed to establish the baseline and outcome measures. This project is presently on hold.
