The ARIC community surveillance study monitors admissions to acute care hospitals and deaths due to coronary heart disease (CHD) among all residents 35-74 years of age of the four ARIC study sites. These surveillance areas included over 360 000 men and women in four communities: Forsyth County, North Carolina; the city of Jackson, Mississippi; eight northern suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Washington County, Maryland.

Over the period 1987 to 1996 the annual age-adjusted mortality rate of CHD fell 3.2% (95% Confidence Interval: 2.0, 4.3) among men and 3.8% (95% CI: 1.9, 5.6) among women. The greater part of the decline took place between 1987 and 1991. The average annual percent of new (incident) hospitalized myocardial infarction events did not change appreciably during the period, except in African Americans (not shown in this figure) where there was evidence of an increase over time. The ARIC data suggests that the recent decline in CHD mortality in these communities is not due to a reduction in the number of new CHD events, and that improvements in survival following a heart attack are playing a role. A detailed description of these results can be found in the publication by Rosamond WD and colleagues in Int J Epidemiol 2001 Oct;30 Suppl 1:S17-22

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