Heart disease is the leading killer of Ohio residents, and it's even worse for black men and women.
Heart disease is the leading killer of Ohio residents, and it’s even worse for black men and women.
Experts say this disparity between whites and blacks exists because of a lack of education about the disease as well as a lack of access to health care, fresh food and places to exercise.
A national group called Close the Gap wants to reduce the disparity and has chosen Columbus as one of several sites across the nation to bring local leaders together to reduce heart disease among women and minorities.
Some of the group’s work could involve:
• Teaching people how high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels can lead to heart disease.
• Offering an online course for medical professionals to show that heart-attack symptoms are different in women from what they are in men.
• Attracting a supermarket chain to build in a neighborhood that lacks access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
“Not only do we focus on treatment, but we focus on wellness and leading a healthy lifestyle to prevent illness,” said Mariana Rodrigues, national director of Close the Gap. “We know that the more-effective interventions are done at the local level.”
Dr. Charles Noble, a cardiologist, is leading the Columbus group, which includes members from local and state public health agencies, area hospital systems, schools and businesses.
The group began meeting in the fall, but Noble said he has been working at narrowing the disparity since he began practicing 20 years ago.
He said that even among people with insurance, women and minorities are 30?percent less likely than white men to get bypass surgery, angioplasty or a pacemaker.
“Fifty-five percent of heart disease is really preventable,” Noble said. “It is simple things like exercise, simple diets and getting plenty of sleep.”
According to the Ohio Commission on Minority Health, the annual cost of the racial and ethnic disparities from heart disease is $4.8?billion. In 2009, black men were 38 percent more likely to die of stroke than white men, and black women were 36?percent more likely to die of stroke than white women, according to the commission.
“When we look at those numbers, the burden of the disease clearly rests in that population,” said Angela Dawson, executive director of the commission. “The statistics are compelling, and it’s those statistics that compel us to do something different.”
Changing the way things are done to save lives is what Sandy Gill of Columbus Public Health said she hopes to accomplish with Close the Gap.
“We’re trying to look at those neighborhoods and access to resources,” said Gill, project manager of Creating Healthy Communities. “If you have three small children, need milk and don’t have a car, you need to figure out childcare and how to get there. Things we’d think are simple aren’t so simple.”
Access to health care, including where heart hospitals are located and how quickly ambulances respond to cardiac calls in at-risk neighborhoods, will be discussed by the Close the Gap board over the next few years.
Noble said the board will create a task force in the coming months that will focus on a specific neighborhood.
“Are they aware of certain risk factors, whether they’re hereditary or lifestyle, and how these contribute to cardiovascular disease?” said Jim Tomaszewski, vice president of cardiovascular services at OhioHealth. “That’s what I anticipate us spending our time on — what can we do to improve access, education, timely treatment, assessing risk factors?”
The goal, he said, is to find the causes of the disparities and figure out as a group “what can we do about it.”