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March 27, 2024

3 minute read


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Important points:

  • Environmental inequity may play an important role in determining neighborhood-level CV risk.
  • Residents of areas with high levels of pollution and socio-economic disadvantage had an increased risk of CAD and stroke.

Environmental injustices, such as air pollution and poor transportation infrastructure, may play an important role in local cardiovascular disease risk and risk factors, the researchers reported.

Furthermore, there were significant differences in resident age and race/ethnicity in neighborhoods with the highest levels of adverse environmental and socio-economic factors compared to neighborhoods with the lowest levels. American Heart Association Journal.



An image depicting environmental pollution.
Environmental inequity may play an important role in determining neighborhood-level CV risk. Image: Adobe Stock

“Our study is one of the first to examine the effects of both social and environmental factors in combination and examine the complex interactions between them.” Dr. Sarju Ganatra, said in a press release, a cardiologist, associate director of research, and director of the Cardio-Oncology Program and the South Asia Cardiometabolic Program at Leahy Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts. “Our goal is to help the medical community better inform patients about the environmental factors they encounter every day. As a result, patients can minimize harm and reduce health risks. This allows us to reduce exposure to harmful environmental conditions, such as exposure to harmful chemicals and air pollutants.”

For this analysis, Ganatra Dr. Sumanth Khadke, Researchers at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center utilized data from the CDC 2022 Population-level Analysis and Community Estimates (PLACES) database to obtain CVD prevalence and CVD risk factors in U.S. Census tracts. Census tracts were ranked into quartiles of social vulnerability using the 2022 Environmental Justice Index (EJI). Quartile 1 is the most vulnerable and quartile 4 is the most vulnerable.

EJI categorizes and ranks census tract domains into three modules: environmental burden module, social vulnerability module, and health vulnerability module.

The environmental burden module took into account air pollution, potentially hazardous and toxic locations, the built environment, transportation infrastructure, and water pollution. The social vulnerability module reported racial and ethnic minority status, socioeconomic factors, household characteristics, and housing type. The health vulnerability module was not used in this study.

EJI and CVD risks

Census tracts in the lowest quartiles of the EJI and environmental burden modules had the highest mean proportions of white and non-Hispanic individuals and adults ages 45 to 64 and 65 and older. The highest quartile had the highest median proportion of black people and adults ages 18 to 44.

From 2015 to 2019, researchers found that in census tracts in the top quartile of EJI, CAD (RR = 1.684, 95% CI, 1.66-1.708) and stroke (RR = 2.112, 95% CI, 2.078- 2.147) was observed to have the highest incidence. The worst.

Similarly, high blood pressure (RR = 1.561; 95% CI, 1.54-1.583), diabetes (RR = 2.024; 95% CI, 1.993-2.056), high cholesterol, obesity, lack of health insurance, working less than 7 hours The proportion of people with poor sleep, lack of leisure-time physical activity, or poor physical or mental health lasting 14 days or more is the highest in the highest EJI quartile compared to the lowest in the Census. It was expensive in the ward.

Although the researchers observed no significant differences between quartiles 1 and 2 of the environmental burden module for many CVD and CVD risk factors, the respective proportions were consistent from quartiles 2 to 4. stroke in quartile 4 compared with quartile 1 (RR = 1.118; 95% CI, 1.102-1.135).

Environmental factors are “important and independent”

“I was surprised to see that social and environmental factors are closely related to health outcomes and interact in complex ways. We were able to demonstrate the effect of And even more surprising is the fact that, even after controlling for socio-economic factors, environmental factors play a significant and independent role in determining a variety of heart disease and other related health outcomes. ,” Ganatra said in the release.

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