A new nationwide survey from the Association of Black Cardiologists reveals stark gaps in heart health knowledge that fall heavily on Black and Latino communities. Awareness of basic cardiovascular risk factors remains low across the country, but the disparities are most pronounced among groups already facing higher rates of heart disease.Only about 36% of all respondents knew their own cholesterol levels. That number fell to 30% among Latino respondents and just 29% among Black respondents, despite both groups experiencing higher burdens of high blood pressure, diabetes, and other cardiovascular risks. The survey also found that roughly 40% of adults did…
Author: Disparity Matters
Poverty and long-standing racial inequities shape who carries the highest burden of modifiable dementia risk factors in the United States, according to a new study. The research, involving more than 5,000 adults, shows that people with lower incomes and those from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups face markedly higher exposure to conditions that can raise the likelihood of dementia later in life.Study author Eric L. Stulberg, MD, MPH, notes that people living below the poverty line “may bear a higher burden of many modifiable dementia risk factors.” Those factors include untreated hearing and vision loss, diabetes, high blood pressure,…
Black and Brown communities are paying the highest price for America’s dependence on oil, gas, and coal, a new report warns, with fossil fuel pollution driving asthma, heart disease, neurological damage, and adverse birth outcomes. The harms begin at extraction and continue through refining, transportation, and combustion, with even waste products like coal ash making people sick.The coalition of medical and health organizations behind “Fueling Sickness: The Hidden Health Costs of Fossil Fuel Pollution” finds that fossil fuels are damaging public health “in more ways than most people realize,” with widespread injury to the lungs, heart, brain, and other organs.…
Black men face a stark reality when it comes to prostate cancer: they are more likely to develop aggressive forms of the disease and die from it than other populations. Now, the largest study of its kind has identified five genes that significantly increase the risk of aggressive and metastatic prostate cancer specifically in men of African descent.Researchers examined 37 prostate cancer predisposition genes in over 12,000 men with African ancestry from seven countries across North America and Africa. They discovered that disease-causing variants in ATM, BRCA2, CHEK2, HOXB13, and PALB2 genes made carriers up to six times more likely…
A life-threatening pregnancy complication linked to cesarean sections has surged from extremely rare to alarmingly common. Placenta accreta, where the placenta fuses to uterine scar tissue from previous C-sections, affected just 1 in 4,000 pregnancies in the 1970s. Recent reports show rates as high as 1 in 272 deliveries.The condition can be deadly. About two-thirds of women with placenta accreta hemorrhage during childbirth, and patients can bleed to death in under 10 minutes. A Vanderbilt University study found that 5 to 7 percent of patients with severe cases died in childbirth. Between 2010 and 2023, twenty-five women died from placenta…
A troubling pattern of racial disparities has emerged in cognitive health across America, with minority communities bearing a disproportionate burden of increasing cognitive disabilities over the past decade.Research published in Neurology examined data from over 4.5 million annual surveys conducted between 2013 and 2023, revealing that self-reported cognitive disabilities among U.S. adults rose from 5.3% to 7.4%. However, the impact varied dramatically across racial and ethnic groups, exposing significant health inequities.American Indian and Alaska Native adults reported the highest prevalence of cognitive challenges, with rates climbing from 7.5% to 11.2%. Hispanic respondents experienced a substantial increase from 6.8% to 9.9%,…
A common genetic variant has been identified that increases the risk of dilated cardiomyopathy in people of African ancestry, offering new insights into persistent racial health disparities in cardiovascular disease.Dilated cardiomyopathy weakens and enlarges the heart’s chambers and stands as one of the leading causes of heart failure. Black individuals develop this condition at twice the rate of white individuals, a disparity that traditional risk factors cannot fully explain.Researchers have long recognized that hypertension and socioeconomic challenges contribute to cardiovascular health differences between racial groups. However, this study reveals that these environmental and lifestyle factors alone do not account for…
Widening Racial Disparity in Cesarean Births Harm Black FamiliesCesarean births in the United States are revealing “striking racial and ethnic disparities,” with Black mothers facing the steepest and most persistent gaps, according to maternal-fetal medicine specialist Marie Boller, MD. While national cesarean rates plateaued and even declined slightly between 2012 and 2021, Black mothers started the decade with higher cesarean rates and saw the disparity grow even larger by 2021, signaling that national progress has not been shared equitably.Boller’s team examined cesarean trends over nearly a decade, stratifying results by parity to account for how prior births shape cesarean risk.…
A growing body of research is revealing how social and environmental conditions shape the brain—and why communities with fewer resources may face hidden cognitive disadvantages. A new commentary highlights findings from a large study of more than 10,000 children, showing that neighborhood opportunity exerts measurable effects on both brain structure and cognitive performance.The study examined how scores on the Childhood Opportunity Index, a measure that captures 29 indicators across education, health, environment, and economic resources, relate to youth development. Children living in higher-opportunity neighborhoods performed better across “all cognitive measures,” including verbal ability, attentional control, working memory, processing speed, episodic…
For many Black families, high cholesterol is not just about diet and exercise; it is driven by an inherited condition that medicine often overlooks. Familial hypercholesterolemia, or FH, raises LDL cholesterol to dangerous levels from birth, yet it is rarely named in exams or community health efforts, even though it affects about 1 in 250 adults nationwide.That silence has real consequences for racial health disparities. Black Americans with FH are underdiagnosed and undertreated compared with white patients, leaving them at higher risk for severe outcomes such as heart attacks and stroke. Only 61% of Black patients with FH are prescribed…