Heart disease linked to societal disparities

Physicians are urged to encourage communities to provide improved access to care and to healthy living facilities for all.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. July 23, 2001.

Washington -- Geographic disparities in the availability of health care coupled with long-standing societal inequities are taking a toll on the cardiovascular health of black men over age 35, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and West Virginia University in Morgantown.

Researchers found that black men are 26% more likely than white men, and almost twice as likely as Hispanic men, to die of heart disease.

Higher rates of heart disease also were found among men who live in parts of the rural South, including the Mississippi River Valley and Appalachian regions, than among men living in most parts of the western United States and upper Midwest.

Approximately 356,598 men die of heart disease each year. About 5.8 million men alive today have suffered a heart attack or angina pectoris, according to the CDC. And mortality rates for heart disease are higher than that of all forms of cancer combined.

"We definitely want primary health care providers to get the message that heart disease is a leading cause of illness and death for people of all races and all ethnicities and for both men and women," said Elizabeth Barnett, PhD, the study's lead investigator and director of West Virginia University's Office for Social Environment and Health Research.

But differences in living conditions and in opportunities for healthy living are likely the main reasons for the "very real racial and ethnic disparities that we see," Dr. Barnett said.

"The highest rates in death from heart disease for men are found in the regions of the country with the poorest economies and few health care resources, particularly in underdeveloped rural areas," she said. [...]