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1. Many interventions to quit smoking, increase physical activity, reduce weight and improve diet can reduce risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The interventions seem to produce only small effects, if any, and there is a lack of evidence regarding effects on morbidity and mortality. A small or moderate effect may be important, though, both for the individual but particularly at population level. 2. Several interventions support smoking cessation: mass media campaigns targeted at young people and adults, advice from health professionals both in primary care and hospitals, self help programs, group therapy, telephone advice, interventions in the workplace, nicotine replacement, bupropion and varenicline. 3. Mass media campaigns aimed at adult established smokers seemed to have similar effects regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or education. 4. Biomedical risk assessments and hypnosis are unlikely to help smokers to quit. 5. We can not draw conclusions on the effects on smoking rates of training of health professionals, school-based or family-based programs, acupuncture, physical activity, interventions for preventing tobacco sales to minors or relapse prevention. 6. Physical activity interventions moderately improve self-reported physical activity and cardio-respiratory fitness, and help achieving a predetermined activity level. 7. Exercise for overweight and type 2 diabetes supports weight reduction and reduces cardiovascular disease risk factors even if no weight is lost. 8. Calorie restricted diets in overweight hypertensive persons can give modest weight loss and blood pressure decreases. 9. Weight loss strategies in prediabetes may reduce weight and diabetes incidence. 10. Dietary advice, advice to reduce or modify fat intake and reduce intake of salt may have a small, but important effect on cardiovascular risk factors. 11. There are no high quality data on the efficacy of the dietary treatment of type 2 diabetes or familial hypercholesterolaemia. 12. An organized system of regular review may reduce blood pressure. 13. We have not assessed cost effectiveness of the interventions. 14. We need more evidence on effects of interventions to reduce social inequalities in risk for and incidence of cardiovascular disease. 15. We need evidence from studies of high quality and longer follow-up measuring morbidity and mortality, for several of the interventions that we have assessed.

Cardiovascular agents.

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Systematic reviews (Medical research)

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The Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services was commissioned by the Norwegian Directorate of Health to perform a systematic review of the scientific evidence concerning effects of rehabilitation on social and community participation among patients with reduced functional capacity. All patients were included regardless of their diagnosis. According to a parliamentary bill, rehabilitation is defined as: time-limited, planned processes with clear objectives and means, in which several parties cooperate to provide necessary assistance to the user's own efforts to achieve the best possible coping and functional ability, independence and social and community participation. We searched for controlled studies of effect in databases for medical research literature. The criteria for inclusion were:1. Population: patients with reduced functional capacity regardless of diagnosis2. Intervention: multidisciplinary interventions based on the patient's own aims and needs, and where the patients actively participate in their own rehabilitation process3. Outcome: participation socially and/or in the community The search identified 4876 references; we included three controlled clinical trials and three controlled before and after studies in this report. The included studies differed regarding various aspects. The patients had different diagnoses, the professional groups that participated in the multidisciplinary teams varied, the types of patient's participation and which social activities or ways of participating in the community that was addressed all varied between the studies. The studies had different study designs, although they all included a control group. According to the quality assessment tool used the studies were all evaluated to have unclear or high risk of bias. The quality of the documentation for the effect of the intervention is too low for us to draw conclusions on whether rehabilitation contributes to the patients social and community participation. Whether the results can be generalised to other groups or other interventions is unclear. We need larger end better studies before a clearer conclusion can be drawn.

Rehabilitation. --- Patient participation. --- Social participation. --- Communities --- Social aspects.