Role of support networks in maintenance of improved cardiovascular health status

This study was undertaken to clarify the relationship between maintaining an improved cardiovascular health status and social support networks. Two hundred and ninety participants from a national trial that was carried out to specify the impact of reducing risk for cardiovascular disease were rescreened 3 years after completion of the trial. Original risk status of the participants was compared to risk status at the end to identify who had an improved risk status (n = 204). Risk status of 204 improvers was calculated from the rescreening data to identify maintainers (n = 63) and nonmaintainers (n = 143). No significant differences were found between maintainers and nonmaintainers in sociodemographic status, or in level of general support. Highly significant differences were found for four types of support provided specifically for risk reduction: information/advice (P = 0.002), appraisal (P = 0.004), emotional support (P = 0.01) and availability (P = 0.019). Most of these differences in support were accounted for by the larger support network identified by the maintainers. In addition, compared to nonmaintainers, maintainers' networks were more family-centered (P = 0.012), and were correspondingly more dense (P = 0.021). A discriminant function analysis using the significant variables was able to predict maintenance in 72% of the cases. The significant variables also accounted for 10% of the variance between maintainers and nonmaintainers. The implications of this study are: (1) assessment of support should be specific to the health outcome being studied; (2) research on the impact of social environment on health status will benefit from clearly specifying individual components of social support and social networks; (3) amount of social support provided is related to size of the network and relationship of supporter to the at-risk individual; (4) because social support and social networks account for a small but significant amount of the variance between maintainers and nonmaintainers, these concepts should be included in patient assessments prior to developing a treatment or maintenance plan.