Socioeconomic status can help predict whether a person will die from heart disease, according to a study published August 25 in the Journal of Cardiac Failure.
Counties in the U.S. that have high rates of poverty and other measures of social deprivation also have higher rates of death from heart failure, indicating that socioeconomic status plays an important role in disease mortality, according to researchers from University Hospitals in Cleveland.
More than 1.25 million heart failure deaths across 3,048 counties that occurred between 1999
and 2018 were analyzed for the study. Researchers used multiple indicators of employment, poverty, income, housing, and education to determine a person's level of socioeconomic deprivation.
People's addresses may affect their mortality because poorer communities often have less access to expensive medications, therapies, and quality healthcare. This highlights the need to address these factors to improve heart failure outcomes, according to the study.
