When US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died from complications of high blood pressure in 1945, the medical community sought to discover the nature and causes of heart disease. Thus was born a multi-generational, decades-long research study into people’s health in Framingham, Massachusetts. This study found scientific evidence about heart disease and changed treatment, research, and culture. This book chronicles this history and preserves this inspiring story for future generations.
At the time of writing, Levy serves as the director of the Framingham study, and Brink is a medical journalist. Together, they divide the Framingham narrative into 17 smaller stories that communicate how these people – researchers and community – changed the world. They capture these dynamic events in a series of before-and-after scenes. Varied and interesting topics include: technology and research, the culture of risk factors, high blood pressure, the challenges of entrenched pro-smoking habits, and the sedentary, high-fat lifestyle.
The authors relate about the hardships and victories shared amongst the participants and workers. They talk frankly about times where the study was jeopardized by external threats. They tell how the town of Framingham changed for the better by tracking their families’ health. They tell individual stories about how the study united the community across generational and ethnic barriers.
Published in 2005, this book could use some updating. Written soon after the completion of the Human Genome Project, it concludes with a chapter on how Framingham has encountered the era of genetics. I’d like to hear how that particular story has progressed over the past 15 years. To my ears as a researcher, it’s refreshing to hear how steady data collection and analysis has changed and continues to change human lives. This study has impacted the lifestyle of almost every living adult worldwide – whether through modifying diet, embedding the value of exercise, or exposing the vice of smoking. This book provides an accessible and friendly way of learning about this study’s history and the people of Framingham behind the study. Now, after learning so much about healthy hearts, I need to get back to my treadmill…
A Change of Heart: How the People of Framingham, Massachusetts, Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Cardiovascular Disease
By Daniel Levy and Susan Brink
Copyright (c) 2005
Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN13 9780375412752
Page Count: 258
Genre: History of Medicine
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