Community interventions to reduce delay time between AMI symptoms and contact with the medical system have been conducted in Britain, Canada, Sweden, Australia, Germany, King County in Washington, and Jacksonville, Illinois. The interventions have been promising, but the studies suffer from problems that make the reported results difficult to interpret. Almost all the published studies assessed delay time pre-to-post intervention and had no control or comparison group, making the magnitude and significance of impact from the intervention difficult to determine. Most were conducted in countries other than the United States, so applicability to the health-care system in the United States is questionable. Although some examined the effect of a public education program on ambulance and ED utilization, the effects of public education campaigns on use of the EMS or ED remains unanswered.