United States – The US is making big steps in the war against heart disease, with heart-related deaths being decreasing over the past three decades.
An analysis has shown, however, that only the haves have benefited.
Income Divide Evident in Heart Attack Rates
While rates of heart attack have remained the same or increased among the poor during that period, researchers have found in a study, as reported by HealthDay.
“The decline in cardiovascular health has not been shared equally over the last three decades,” said researcher Dr. Adam Richards, a George Washington University associate professor of global health and medicine.
The risk of 10 years declined from 7.7% to 5.1% for the wealthiest individuals and from 7.6% to 6.1% for people with above-average wealth, as found by researchers.
Access to Healthcare and Social Determinants
On the other hand, the figure for heart diseases among the low-income group remains unchanged (8%).
Researchers emphasized that these results were obtained from an ordinary health survey of the adult population aged 40 to 75 conducted by the federal government. The survey included almost 27,000 people who had never experienced a stroke or heart attack in the past.
Generally, the country-wide statistics showed improvement in heart disease. Still, when researchers divided people into income groups, they found that some did not experience heart benefits equally within the range.
The new study was published April 3 in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
“This study shows we need to be looking long and hard about ways to improve access to healthcare and other social determinants of health that play a role in higher cardiovascular risks for low-income households,” Richards said in a journal news release.
Call for Policy Interventions
The study had no mechanism of figuring out why these disparities exist, but other studies have exhibited that improved treatments of the heart disease and heart risk factors account for a reduction in death arising from the heart, researchers asserted.
Richer people probably benefit from this therapy that makes heart disease less common than their poor counterparts, the doctor says. These people may even have health insurance but are haggled with many obstacles on the way to accessing health care.
Consequently, when income distribution is considered, the United States shapes the opportunity to live a prolonged and healthy life, noted Richards, as reported by HealthDay.
Additionally, harmful conditions like smoking, being overweight, and diabetes are also quite pervasive among low-income populations, researchers explain. The United States has much less investment in programs that keep people healthy, including which would include paid childcare and medical leave and benefits for food and nutrition.