Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2018 Jan 19;122(2):213-230.
doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.117.312243.

Reducing Cardiovascular Disparities Through Community-Engaged Implementation Research: A National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Workshop Report

Affiliations
Review

Reducing Cardiovascular Disparities Through Community-Engaged Implementation Research: A National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Workshop Report

George A Mensah et al. Circ Res. .

Abstract

Cardiovascular disparities remain pervasive in the United States. Unequal disease burden is evident among population groups based on sex, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, nativity, or geography. Despite the significant declines in cardiovascular disease mortality rates in all demographic groups during the last 50 years, large disparities remain by sex, race, ethnicity, and geography. Recent data from modeling studies, linked micromap plots, and small-area analyses also demonstrate prominent variation in cardiovascular disease mortality rates across states and counties, with an especially high disease burden in the southeastern United States and Appalachia. Despite these continued disparities, few large-scale intervention studies have been conducted in these high-burden populations to examine the feasibility of reducing or eliminating cardiovascular disparities. To address this challenge, on June 22 and 23, 2017, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute convened experts from a broad range of biomedical, behavioral, environmental, implementation, and social science backgrounds to summarize the current state of knowledge of cardiovascular disease disparities and propose intervention strategies aligned with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute mission. This report presents the themes, challenges, opportunities, available resources, and recommended actions discussed at the workshop.

Keywords: cardiovascular diseases; community-based participatory research; geography; social class; social determinants of health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest Disclosure: None

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Death rates among Blacks and Whites, by age group (years) – United States, 1999–2015
Among adults aged ≥65 years, the death rate in 2015 relative to that in 1999 declined 27% for Blacks and 17% for Whites, resulting in a crossover in death rates beginning in 2010, when Blacks had lower death rates than Whites. Reproduced from Cunningham TJ, et al. Vital Signs: Racial Disparities in Age-Specific Mortality Among Blacks or African Americans - United States, 1999-2015. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. May 05 2017;66(17):444-456.
Figure 2
Figure 2. United States County-Level Mortality from Cardiovascular Diseases
A: Age-standardized mortality rate for both sexes combined in 2014. B: Percent change in the age-standardized mortality rate for both sexes combined between 1980 and 2014. In panel A, the color scale is truncated at approximately the 1st and 99th percentiles as indicated by the range given on the scale. In panel B, the color scale is similarly truncated at the 1st percentile but not at the 99th percentile to avoid combining counties with decreases in the mortality rate and counties with increases in the mortality rate into a single group. C: Age-standardized mortality rate in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2014. The bottom border, middle line, and top border of the boxes indicate the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles, respectively, across all counties; whiskers, the full range across counties; and circles, the national-level rate. Reproduced from Roth GA, et al. Trends and Patterns of Geographic Variation in Cardiovascular Mortality Among US Counties, 1980-2014. JAMA. May 16 2017;317(19):1976-1992; with permission from the American Medical Association.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Action Cycle for Improving a Community’s Health
At the core of the Action Cycle are key stakeholders for taking action. Each step on the Action Cycle is considered a critical component for creating healthier communities and offers a guide that describes key activities within each step that includes suggested tools, resources, and additional reading. In this Action Cycle, “Work Together” and “Communicate” are distal because they are needed throughout the Cycle. Reproduced from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Action Center, 2017; Take Action Cycle. http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/take-action-cycle.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. National Center for Health Statistics. Health, united states, 2015: With special feature on racial and ethnic health disparities. CDC, NCHS; 2016. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus15.pdf. Accessed. - PubMed
    1. Woolf SH, Aron LY. The us health disadvantage relative to other high-income countries: Findings from a national research council/institute of medicine report. JAMA. 2013;309:771–772. - PubMed
    1. Mensah GA, Mokdad AH, Ford ES, Greenlund KJ, Croft JB. State of disparities in cardiovascular health in the united states. Circulation. 2005;111:1233–1241. - PubMed
    1. Cunningham TJ, Croft JB, Liu Y, Lu H, Eke PI, Giles WH. Vital signs: Racial disparities in age-specific mortality among blacks or african americans - united states, 1999-2015. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017;66:444–456. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Jones K, Mansfield CJ. Premature mortality in north carolina: Progress, regress, and disparities by county and race, 2000-2010. North Carolina medical journal. 2014;75:159–168. - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms