Unmasking Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease: Nutritional, Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Health-Care-Related Contributions

Abstract

The cardiovascular disease (CVD) burden and disparities within the general population are largely determined by environmental, dietary, and other lifestyle factors. Minority groups have higher rates of morbidity and mortality than do their white counterparts for many diseases, including CVD. Overall, social and environmental factors seem to be more explanatory and influential than genetic factors in explaining the population disease burden of chronic CVD and racial/ethnic differences in the same. When addressing both the risk factors and the health challenges of CVD, it is critical that health-care providers make efforts to understand how racial and ethnic minorities define health, their health beliefs, and health seeking behaviors, as well as how their attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs influence health outcomes. Effective efforts in improving modifiable, lifestyle factors, and deleterious chronic exposures (e.g., positive energy balance) are perhaps the major venue for improving the population CVD burden; and emphasizing cultural competence and raising quality of medical care will be very effective means for reducing disparities in care provision and clinical outcomes in health systems.

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