Asian Americans are often held up as a picture of good cardiovascular health, yet new research shows that this perception masks stark and consequential disparities across subgroups. Age-adjusted cardiovascular mortality is lowest in Asian women and overall prevalence appears slightly lower than in the general U.S. population, but that surface-level picture crumbles once ethnicity and country of origin are disaggregated. In reality, there are roughly 40 distinct Asian groups in the U.S., and their heart risks diverge sharply in ways with serious implications for racial health
Data show that ischemic heart disease deaths have fallen for Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and Korean men, as well as for non-Hispanic white and Hispanic men, while remaining stubbornly high for Asian Indian and Vietnamese men. Asian Indian women now have some of the highest ischemic heart disease mortality rates, and Southeast Asian Indians are described as “really plagued with premature coronary disease,” in contrast to higher stroke rates among Asian Americans from Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan and Southeast Asians from Thailand and Vietnam. Cardiovascular risk factors follow similarly fractured lines: type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertension and smoking vary widely by subgroup, with Filipino, Japanese and Asian Indian communities bearing heavier burdens than Chinese Americans on several measures.
Experts say these inequities have been obscured for decades by U.S. data systems that lump Asians into a single category, reinforced by the “model minority” myth and assumptions that Asian Americans are uniformly prosperous, well-educated and healthy. One physician-epidemiologist warns that “nobody’s actually taking the effort to rigorously and systematically study them,” but that is beginning to change with a major new multi-ethnic cohort study and emerging, community-engaged research centers focused on Asian health. For minority communities already facing structural racism and barriers to care, peeling back these layers of data is not just an academic exercise; it is a prerequisite for designing prevention, screening and treatment strategies that actually reach those at highest risk – and for recognizing Asian Americans as fully part of the nation’s broader racial health disparities crisis.
See: “Feature | Peeling Back the Layers: Understanding CV Health in Asian American Communities” (May 1, 2025)
