The Ethics Blog

A blog from the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Tag: cardiovascular disease

Illness prevention needs to be adapted to people’s illness perceptions

1 March, 2022 / / 1 Comment

Several factors increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Many of these we can influence ourselves through changes in lifestyle or preventive drug treatment. But people’s attitudes to prevention vary with their perceptions of cardiovascular disease. Health communication to support preventive measures therefore needs to take into account people’s illness perceptions.

Åsa Grauman and three colleagues conducted an online survey with 423 randomly selected Swedes aged 40 to 70 years. Participants were asked to answer questions about themselves and about how they view cardiovascular disease. They then participated in an experiment designed to capture how they weighted their preferences regarding health check results.

The results showed a wide variety of perceptions about cardiovascular disease. Women more often cited stress as their most important risk factor while men more often cited overweight and obesity. An interesting result is that people who stated that they smoked, had hypertension, were overweight or lived sedentary, tended to downplay that factor as less risky for cardiovascular disease. On the other hand, people who stated that they experienced stress had a tendency to emphasize stress as a high risk of cardiovascular disease. People who reported family history as a personal risk of illness showed a greater reluctance to participate in health examinations.

Regarding preferences about health check results, it was found that the participants preferred to have their results presented in everyday words and with an overall assessment (rather than, for example, in numbers). They also preferred to get the results in a letter (rather than by logging in to a website) that included lifestyle recommendations, and they preferred 30 minutes of consultation (over no or only 15 minutes of consultation).

It is important to reach out with the message that the risk of cardiovascular disease can be affected by lifestyle changes, and that health checks can identify risk factors in people who are otherwise asymptomatic. Especially people with a family history of cardiovascular disease, who in the study were more reluctant to undergo health examinations, may need to be aware of this.

To reach out with the message, it needs to be adapted to how people perceive cardiovascular disease, and we need to become better at supporting correct perceptions, the authors conclude. I have mentioned only a small selection of results from the study. If you want to see the richness of results, read the article: Public perceptions of myocardial infarction: Do illness perceptions predict preferences for health check results.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Åsa Grauman, Jennifer Viberg Johansson, Marie Falahee, Jorien Veldwijk. 2022, Public perceptions of myocardial infarction: Do illness perceptions predict preferences for health check results. Preventive Medicine Reports 26, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2021.101683

This post in Swedish

Exploring preferences

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Two new dissertations!

open books
16 March, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Two of our doctoral students at CRB recently successfully defended their dissertations. Both dissertations reflect a trend in bioethics from purely theoretical studies to also include empirical studies of people’s perceptions of bioethical issues.

Åsa Grauman’s dissertation explores the public’s view of risk information about cardiovascular disease. The risk of cardiovascular disease depends on many factors, both lifestyle and heredity influence the risk. Many find it difficult to understand such risk information and many underestimate their risk, while others worry unnecessarily. For risk information to make sense to people, it must be designed so that recipients can benefit from it in practice. That requires knowing more about their perspective on risk, how health information affects them, and what they think is important and unimportant when it comes to risk information about cardiovascular disease. One of Åsa Grauman’s conclusions from her studies of these issues is that people often estimate their risk on the basis of self-assessed health and family history. As this can lead to the risk being underestimated, she argues that health examinations are important which can nuance individuals’ risk assessments and draw their attention to risk factors that they themselves can influence.

If you want more conclusions and see the studies behind them, read Åsa Grauman’s dissertation: The publics’ perspective on cardiovascular risk information: Implications for practice.

Mirko Ancillotti’s dissertation explores the Swedish public’s view of antibiotic resistance and our responsibility to reduce its prevalence. The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one of the major global threats to public health. The increase is related to our often careless overuse of antibiotics in society. The problem needs to be addressed both nationally and internationally, both collectively and individually. Mirko Ancillotti focuses on our individual responsibility for antibiotic resistance. He examines how such a responsibility can be supported through more effective health communication and improved institutional conditions that can help people to use antibiotics more judiciously. Such support requires knowledge of the public’s beliefs, values ​​and preferences regarding antibiotics, which may affect their willingness and ability to take responsibility for their own use of antibiotics. One of the studies in the dissertation indicates that people are prepared to make significant sacrifices to reduce their contribution to antibiotic resistance.

If you want to know more about the Swedish public’s view of antibiotic resistance and the possibility of supporting judicious behaviour, read Mirko Ancillotti’s dissertation: Antibiotic Resistance: A Multimethod Investigation of Individual Responsibility and Behaviour.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Åsa Grauman. 2021. The publics’ perspective on cardiovascular risk information: Implications for practice. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

Mirko Ancillotti. 2021. Antibiotic Resistance: A Multimethod Investigation of Individual Responsibility and Behaviour. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

This post in Swedish

Ethics needs empirical input

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