Title: Why Are African-Americans at Greater Risk for Heart Disease?
Headings: Why Are African-Americans at Greater Risk for Heart Disease?
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Why Are African-Americans at Greater Risk for Heart Disease?
African-Americans are at higher risk for heart disease, yet they're less likely to get the care they need.
African-Americans and Heart Failure
African-Americans and Health Care

Content: high blood pressure (also called hypertension), chronic kidney disease, being overweight, and having low levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol. Three-fourths of African-Americans who develop heart failure have high blood pressure by age 40. African-Americans and Health Care
To prevent heart failure and other heart disease, it's crucial to treat risk factors successfully, says Anne L. Taylor, MD, a professor of medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital and vice dean of academic affairs at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. But, compared with their white peers, African-Americans often have less access to health care, she says. Not only are they less likely to visit a doctor and get routine screenings, but they're less likely to be referred to specialists. Continued
"African-Americans with heart failure are more likely to be taken care of in a primary care practice," Taylor says, "even though the data would suggest that the best care -- the care that decreases hospitalizations and improves mortality rates -- happens in cardiologists' offices." Further, some African-Americans "tend to see illness and disease as the main reason for health care, so you don't go to the physician for preventive medicine -- you go when you're sick," says Keith C. Ferdinand, MD, FACC, FAHA. Ferdinand is a clinical professor in the cardiology division at Emory University and chief science officer of the Association of Black Cardiologists. " When are you sick? When you have symptoms: