Identify a health disparity
As the U.S. is home to different racial/ethnic minorities, health disparities continues to exit, which can be translated in terms of incidence, prevalence, burden of illness, mortality, and other consequences on health compared to whites. These health disparities can be generally divided into two categories: genetics and social detriment of health (SDOH), which can have an equal or even a more important role. According to the measures that determine population’s health, African Americans (AA) are always the least healthy group in the U.S. due to different factors that make them at higher risk for developing both physical illness, such as hypertension (HTN), and psychological illness, which also leads to HTN.
According to the CDC, AA disparately suffer from high rates of heart diseases and/or HTN, which make these illnesses the first leading cause for the death of AA (CDC, 2017). According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the age-adjusted prevalence of hypertension was 40% in AA compared to 30% in whites, which results in AA having poorer consequences, such as more strokes, cardiovascular, and renal diseases compared to whites. Thus, the most predominant cause for the death gap between AA and whites is HTN (Benjamine et al, 2019). Approximately 1 in 4 US adults has HTN compared to 1 in 3 AA and the death rate per 100,000 people from HTN is more than twice as high for AA as for the population as a whole (McDonald et al, 2009). It is also widely notable that AA “develop HTN at an earlier age, have approximately 7 mmHg higher SBP, and are more likely to have resistant HTN” compared to whites or Hispanic, which contribute to their early death (Benjamine et al, 2019).
Yet so far, addressing HTN in AA falls short of standards and as a result, AA are over-burdened with hypertension morbidity and mortality as opposed to other minority groups in the U.S.
