The last fifty years of research into cardiovascular diseases have shown strong associations between individual risk factor levels and disease rates within and among many cultures. The potential for medical treatment of cardiovascular disease is limited by the insidious development of atherosclerosis and hypertension, the high immediate mortality of coronary disease and stroke, and the inadequacy of treatment for the advanced stages of cardiovascular disease. All of these factors, coupled with the predictable safety and general feasibility of individual risk factor reduction, provided the stimulus for developing community-wide strategies for the prevention of cardiovascular disease.