Current state of unhealthy living characteristics in White, African American and Latinx populations
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Current state of health & lifestyle characteristics in the US
Despite extensive efforts from professional organizations and public health agencies in recent years, the US is failing on many of the basic metrics related to overall and cardiovascular (CV) health. For example, 50% of adults in the US have high blood pressure, but only one in four has it properly controlled.1 The recent Health and Human Services (HHS) Guidelines on Physical Activity2 reports that only 26% of men, 19% of women, and 20% of adolescents meet the recommended amount of physical
PA in hispanic and AA populations
While the health benefits of PA are likely ubiquitous across race and ethnicity, the prevalence of achieving PA recommendations dramatically differs. According to data from the National Health Interview Survey (2018), 20% of AA, 21% of Hispanic, and 26% of White adults meet both the aerobic and muscle-strengthening guidelines for Americans.46 These differences are more pronounced when considering only the aerobic guidelines, with 47% of AA and Hispanic adults meeting recommendations compared to
CRF and ethnicity
Arguably the most important health related benefit of regular PA, particularly in the form of exercise training, is to improve or maintain CRF. The AHA now recommends CRF be considered a vital sign which should be regularly assessed.58 When compared to other major CVD risk factors, CRF has been shown to be as or more potent for predicting risk of morbidity and mortality.58
As discussed above, PA levels have generally been shown to be lower in AA compared to Whites in the US. Thus, it would be
Summary
Providing adequate education to the public, clinicians, and health systems that physical inactivity and low CRF are critical contributors to cardiometabolic risk and mortality remains a challenge. Recent trends suggest that both PA patterns and CRF have been in decline for several decades,2,84,85 and this problem has disproportionately affected under-served populations.38,44,52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,65, 66., 67, 68, 69, 70., 71., 72, 73, 74, 75., 76., 77, 78 The benefits of higher CRF and PA
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
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Cardiorespiratory fitness and physical activity in the lens of social justice – Reporting on the disparities that exist
2024, Progress in Cardiovascular DiseasesThe association of disparities in neighborhood median household income and mortality in patients admitted to the hospital with atrial fibrillation
2023, Progress in Cardiovascular DiseasesCitation Excerpt :Hence in low nMHI, multimorbidity may not be the sole reason for disparity in outcomes. The reason for low nMHI being the most vulnerable population is likely multifactorial resulting from financial constraints, health literacy issues and poor standard of living.31,32 There are very few studies looking at the role of nMHI in AF outcomes.9
Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in weight outcomes, cardiovascular events, and mortality in the look AHEAD trial
2022, Diabetes Research and Clinical PracticeCitation Excerpt :Although no differences in cardiovascular or mortality outcomes were seen between the ILI and DSE arms of the trial overall, Hispanic participants and those with less than a high school degree experienced lower rates of all-cause mortality in the ILI arm than the DSE arm in univariate analyses, with a trend towards an arm by EA interaction in multivariable analyses. These findings identify a population which may receive greater benefit from ILI, a critical finding given that this population already faces inequities in unhealthy lifestyle characteristics [17,18], and targeted ILI have been successful in underserved groups [19–24]. While subgroup analyses should be interpreted as hypothesis-generating with limitations based on smaller populations within strata and potential residual confounding, Look AHEAD, as one of the largest and longest randomized controlled trials of an ILI, offers a unique opportunity to study critically important variables that are less well assessed in real-world environments.