Racism in professional and personal lives may lead to a higher risk of heart disease amongst Black women, according to a new study.
Presented at the Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2023 held by the American Heart Association, the study looked at the information of over 48,000 Black women. Collected through a span of 22 years from 1997 to 2019, the study tracked the health of the women, recording their initial health at the ages of 22-72 years old and following up with them when they entered the 40-90 years old age range. Although all of the participants were healthy in 1997, about 1,947 of the women reported that they were diagnosed with coronary heart disease during their follow-up session.
At the beginning of the study, the women were asked a series of questions about racism in their lives. Using these answers, the researchers created a scoring system by averaging the participants’ answers and splitting them into quartiles.
When they averaged the participants’ responses to questions about racism in housing, police and jobs, the researchers found that the women who said yes to all three were more susceptible to developing heart disease. According to the study, there was a specific 26% increased chance of developing heart disease for the Black women who experienced racism in the three categories.
“Structural racism is real — on the job, in educational circumstances and in interactions with the criminal justice system,” said the president of the American Heart Association, Michelle A. Albert, M.D., M.P.H., FAHA, in a statement. “Now we have hard data linking it to cardiovascular outcomes, which means that we as a society need to work on the things that create the barriers that perpetuate structural racism.”
Of all health problems, heart disease is the one that’s most prevalent in the Black community. According to the latest report released by the CDC in 2022, 176 out of every 100,000 Black women pass away because of heart disease. In addition to struggles with high cholesterol, high blood pressure is a key contributor to these higher rates of heart disease. In 2021, 35.2% of Black Americans who were 18 and over were dealing with high blood pressure.
According to the study, racism can be linked to these higher rates of high blood pressure as well.
“Many Black adults in the U.S. are already at higher risk of developing heart disease due to high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes,” said the lead author, Shanshan Sheehy, per a statement. “Current evidence shows that racism may act as a chronic stressor in the human body, and chronic stress may lead to high blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.”
