The 1978 Conference on the Decline in Coronary Heart Disease Mortality and the 1979 Working Group on Heart Disease Epidemiology both recommended a community surveillance program. As a result, in 1980 the Clinical Applications and Prevention Advisory Committee and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Advisory Council approved Phase I of the surveillance pilot study. Phase II of the pilot study and the full-scale study was approved by the Clinical Applications and Prevention Advisory Committee in May 1982. The Requests for Proposals for ARIC were released in September 1984 and awards made in 1985.