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National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Chronic Disease Prevention
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National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Chronic Disease Prevention Home | Contact Us |
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National Center for
Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Women and Heart Disease: An Atlas of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Mortality CDC's Pioneering Effort Examines the Role of Geographic and Social Disparities in Cardiovascular Health Death rates for heart disease among women are higher than for all forms of cancer combined. Approximately 373,000 women die of heart disease each year. During the past 40 years, public health research has documented persistent geographic disparities in deaths from heart disease in the United States. However, even though heart disease is the leading cause of death among women, many of these studies have reported findings only for men. Women and Heart Disease: An Atlas of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Mortality, released in December 1999, provides essential information for identifying populations of women at greatest risk for heart disease and in greatest need of prevention efforts. Data for the atlas came from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Bureau of the Census. Developed through a cooperative agreement between West Virginia University and NCCDPHP, the atlas presents an extensive series of national and state maps that show local variation in heart disease death rates for all women, American Indian and Alaska Native women, Asian and Pacific Islander women, black women, Hispanic women, and white women from 1990 through 1995. Local geographic disparities in the burden of heart disease among women are likely to reflect underlying inequalities in local environments that make some communities more health-promoting than others. For example, several studies have shown that communities with low levels of economic resources had higher rates of death from heart disease than communities that were comparatively more prosperous. Thus, the atlas also contains national maps of local indicators of the social environment, including the geographic distribution of the population by race and ethnicity, the availability of local economic resources, the social isolation of elderly women, and the availability of medical care resources. |
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In addition to the printed version, the atlas is also available on the Internet. A GIS application called GATHER, developed by ATSDR, is used to power the Web site. According to Dr. Casper, this powerful and flexible application supports a variety of interactive Web sites. The women's atlas was the ATSDR team's first live Internet application and the first NCCDPHP Web application to use GIS. Mike Coss, CDC computer scientist, anticipates that the women's atlas will serve as a model for other NCCDPHP Web applications and for applications from other centers, institutes, and offices within CDC. "This is an exciting new use of technology to increase our understanding of the factors underlying health disparities," he said. Unlike the printed version of the atlas, the Web site allows users to access county-level data by clicking on a particular county. This feature allows the atlas to be used by state health departments to identify communities at highest risk and greatest need for preventive efforts and by researchers to understand determinants of geographical disparities in heart disease. Men and Heart Disease: An Atlas of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Mortality was developed by NCCDPHP and West Virginia University. It was released both in hard copy and on the Internet this summer in a format very similar to that of the women's atlas. For more information, contact Michele Casper at 770/488-2571 or E-mail mcasper@cdc.gov.
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Privacy
Policy | Accessibility This page last reviewed August 10, 2004 United
States Department of Health and Human Services |
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