Targeted Health Dialogues in Primary Care

The County Council of Region Skåne, Sweden, has recently initiated Targeted Health Dialogues in primary care. The prevention program includes health dialogues provided by specially trained personnel, collection of clinical and laboratory data as well as questionnaire data on, e.g., individual health and health behaviors. So far, it enrolls all 40-year old Swedish and foreign-born inhabitants in the county and it will also include all 50- and 60-year old persons within a near future. A research project will be integrated within the program where the collected data will be linked, on the individual level, to national and regional data on hospital admissions, clinical diagnoses from specialist clinics and primary care, causes of death, and prescriptions. The individual linkages will also include population data on sociodemographic characteristics, neighborhood of residence and family relations. Blood samples will be collected for analyses of molecular biomarkers. The research project will examine associations between potential predictors and future risk of cardiovascular diseases and other serious diseases, such as cancer, and also whether the effect of the prevention program is modified by these potential predictors. The effect of the intervention will be examined, and whether the protocol needs to be modified in order to develop more precise and personalized medicine.