Cardiovascular Diseases in African Americans: Fostering Community Partnerships to Stem the Tide

Abstract

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine highlighted community partnerships as important in strategies for ensuring the public's health in the 21st century. Whether defined narrowly as the neighborhood or more broadly as the entire nation, communities represent settings in which health is supported and protected by healthy social connections and environments or risked and damaged by detrimental social, environmental, and policy determinants, as well as adverse behavioral and lifestyle choices. In this article, cardiovascular disease in African Americans is used as an example to highlight the successes achieved during the last half-century in reducing mortality rates, the persisting challenge of suboptimal adoption of evidence-based practices to promote community health and prevent disease, and the still widespread and pervasive health disparities. The article concludes with a call for the scientific community to embrace implementation research in strategic partnership with community stakeholders to stem the tide of cardiovascular disease and reduce related cardiovascular health disparities.

Keywords: African Americans; Cardiovascular disease; community; disparities; environment; health disparities; heart disease; implementation research; lifestyle; partnerships; public health; residence characteristics; review; risk; stroke.

Figure 1:

The extent of diversity experienced in each racial/ethnic group’s typical neighborhood, National Metropolitan Average, 2010 Census. Reproduced from JR Logan and B Stults

Figure 2:

The three elements of community success in implementing community-driven solutions to promote health equity. Image is © 2017 National Academy of the Sciences and is reproduced from with permission of the copyright holder.