By Cristen Jansson / The Daily, UW
Every single year, a group of people larger than the entire population of Seattle die from heart disease. While these 846,000 annual fatalities are only half of what they were in 1980, cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States.
Gregory Roth, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Global Health and Assistant Professor of Cardiology, is the lead author of a recently published study highlighting the disparities between rates of certain cardiovascular disease across the United States. Roth and his team used data collected from death certificates to find out the specific causes of cardiovascular disease on a small geographic scale.
Different areas of the country, whether they be state to state, town to town, or even neighborhood to neighborhood, can experience vastly different rates of heart disease. In fact, though heart disease rates have been declining overall, there are some areas in the United States where it has actually been increasing.
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