While deaths from heart attacks, strokes and other heart diseases have been declining, that trend could reverse if social factors, including race, income, environment and education are not addressed, the American Heart Association said in a “first of its kind scientific statement” published in the association’s journal Circulation and released Aug. 3.
AHA said that advances in prevention and treatment have driven the decline in cardiovascular deaths, but the benefits have not been shared equally across economic, racial, and ethnic groups in the United States.
“The steady decline of death from cardiovascular disease that began in the 1970s might be coming to an end. Overall population health cannot improve if parts of the population do not benefit from improvements in prevention and treatment,” said Edward P. Havranek, M.D., chair of the writing group and a cardiologist at Denver Health Medical Center and professor of cardiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver, Colorado.
Social determinants include circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. The statement notes several areas in which clear associations between societal factors and cardiovascular health have been shown. Among those, as stated by AHA:
Education is a top indicator of one’s socioeconomic status because it affects what kind of job a person has, access to healthcare, income, stress and more. Research indicates that people with lower educational levels die younger, largely due to cardiovascular disease, according to Havranek.
The lower the income, the higher the risk for cardiovascular disease. In one study of more than 500,000 men, researchers found a 40 percent to 50 percent decrease in risk of cardiovascular death, with increasing levels of family income.
