Black Men Hit With Highest Heart Disease Death Rate, Study Finds

Jet, July 9, 2001

Black men are more likely to die of heart disease than White and Hispanic men, a new study has found.

The study, "Men and Heart Disease: An Atlas of Racial and Ethnic Disparities Among Men With Heart Disease," found that race as well as where one lives plays a significant role in heart disease.

The study discovered that Black men older than 35 are 26 percent more likely to die of heart disease than White men. Black men are also nearly twice as likely to die of heart disease than Hispanic men.

The study revealed that about 40 percent of heart disease deaths in Black men occur before they are 65 years old, compared with 21 percent of White men. Black men also tend to develop heart disease and become sicker at an earlier age than Whites, the study found.

The study also discovered that men age 35 and older living in Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky were more likely to die of heart disease than men elsewhere in the United States, while those in Hawaii, Utah and Colorado were less likely.

The study, based on heart disease death rates between 1991 and 1995, found the highest rates in Appalachia, the Ohio-Mississippi River Valley, the Mississippi Delta, and the eastern Piedmont and coastal regions of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Factors that contribute to the high rate of heart disease in some of the regions include: lack of medical access, poor diet, low median family incomes, few white-collar jobs, high unemployment rates and inadequate health insurance, the researchers found.

Dr. Gerald Pohost, noted cardiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and head of the Alabama Task Force on Cardiovascular Disease, pointed out one reason heart disease hits Blacks harder is that they have higher levels of diabetes and high blood pressure, he said.

Elizabeth Barnett, director of the Office for Social Environmental and Health Research at West Virginia University (WVU), was the lead author of the study by WVU and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She noted, "These findings really reflect differences in opportunities for healthy living and differences in access to healthy living."

Barnett also points out that the effects of racism, discrimination and job stress also contribute to the high rates of heart disease. "These mental health factors also affect people physically over long periods of time and promote development of this disease."