While cardiovascular disease deaths have declined across America since the pandemic, Black communities continue facing devastatingly worse outcomes than the rest of the nation. Recent American Heart Association data reveals that roughly 60% of Black adults live with some form of cardiovascular disease, compared with 49% of all U.S. adults.
The disparities grow even sharper when examining specific conditions. Nearly six in 10 Black women and Black men have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, significantly higher than the 43% rate among all U.S. women and half of all U.S. men. More than half of Americans under age 50 hospitalized for heart failure were Black, highlighting how this crisis disproportionately strikes younger Black patients.
Stroke prevalence tells an equally troubling story. Slightly more than 5% of both Black women and Black men have suffered strokes, compared to just 2.9% of all U.S. women and 3.6% of all men. Stroke has now overtaken COVID as the nation’s fourth leading cause of death, with more than 5% of U.S. deaths resulting from strokes and stroke-related complications.
Despite overall improvements, heart disease and stroke still cause more than one out of every four deaths nationwide. In 2023, someone died from cardiovascular disease or stroke every 34 seconds. Dr. Stacey E. Rosen of the American Heart Association emphasized that these conditions continue taking too many lives daily, still killing more people than all cancers and accidents combined.
See: “Cardiovascular Disease Deaths Are Down—but Blacks Still Face the Worst Outcomes” (January 22, 2026)Â
