Strong 76/100
North Karelia Project
In plain English
A community-wide programme in eastern Finland — the region with the world's highest heart-disease rate in the 1970s — shifted the population off butter and toward plant oils and vegetables. Cardiovascular mortality fell roughly 80% over 25 years. It is the longest-running real-world demonstration that policy plus diet can reverse an epidemic.
Why it matters
Community-wide shift to plant oils dropped CVD mortality 80% in 25 years.
Informs: Heart Disease
Provenance
- Design
- Ecological / population-level
- Sample size (n)
- 180,000
- Follow-up
- 25 years
- Peer-reviewed
- Yes
- Replications
- 2
- Funding
- Public / academic
- Funders
- Finnish Government, WHO
- Institutions
- National Public Health Institute of Finland (KTL), WHO
decades.plus score
A transparent 0–100 weighted sum across six components. Higher scores reflect bigger, cleaner, more replicated work.
Strong 76/100
Caveats
Population-level, observational rather than randomised. Tobacco-control and clinical advances also improved over the same period and contributed to the decline.
