Heartbeat Wales

Heartbeat Wales was a community based program in Wales to improve cardiovascular health. The program used a range of health promotion methods to change individual health behaviors and to promote environmental, organizational, and policy changes that support healthy choices. The program included local television series such as "Don't Break Your Heart," "Fit for Life," and the "BBC Diet Programme." To encourage smoking cessation, the program developed the Quit and Win project. Heartbeat Wales worked with grocery retailers to encourage food labeling and nutrition education, and developed the Heartbeat Awards for restaurants that increased the availability of healthy food choices and smoke free areas. The program also developed a worksite health promotion program called Make Health Your Business.

The goal of Heartbeat Wales was to reduce behavioral risks for cardiovascular disease.

Between 1985 and 1990 there were positive behavior changes in 14 of 15 measured key outcome indicators. Residents increased dietary consumption of chicken (15.3% increase), fish (7.9%), fruit (8.4%), vegetables (7.2%), low fat milk (27.7%), and wholegrain bread (7.7%) and decreased consumption of butter (17.0% decrease) and fried food (-18.7%). Smokers in the region increased awareness of the harms of smoking (9.2% increase), made more attempts to stop smoking (1.7%), and got more advice from the general practitioner about quitting (11.2%). The number of people who smoke daily decreased (-4.9%) and the mean number of cigarettes smoked by daily smokers decreased (-0.4%). The proportion of residents who engaged in moderate or strenuous exercise two or more times per week increased (2.1% increase), however the proportion of residents who were overweight also increased (2.5%). In the control group, there were only positive outcomes for 9 of the 15 indicators.