About National Health Index Corp.
About Us Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
Improving cardiometabolic health in minorities
Background
The National Health Index (NHI), a wholly–owned subsidiary of the National Minority Quality Forum, provides demographic intelligence about chronic disease prevalence, costs, outcomes, and associated trends. Our chronic disease search engine provides the most comprehensive reservoir of healthcare information, derived from multiple data sources, at the zip code level. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, obesity, and other common and rare chronic diseases represent the NHI repository, powered by a database that represents more than 800 million patient files.
Cardiometabolic disease is a grouping of risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, abnormally high glucose, elevated triglycerides, low "good" cholesterol, and diabetes. The combination of two or more of these risk factors may lead to an increase risk of heart attack or stroke.
According to the National Health Index, approximately 47 million Americans have cardiometabolic disease which includes one out of ten children ages 12 – 19 and a 43.5% prevalence rate among adults ages 60-69. Among adult African-American populations, the national prevalence of diabetes and concomitant hypertension is 78.6% versus 67.3% for whites. These rates are fueled in large measure by the increasing obesity rate, which has doubled over the past twenty-five years. Care for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease account for 75% of the $1.4 trillion medical care costs in the U.S.
Figure one depicts the prevalence of diabetes and associated hypertension in DC. The parallel hatch mark lines represent African-American zip codes. In some zip codes whose residents are primarily African-American, the prevalence of diabetes with associated hypertension exceeds 79%.
Source: National Health Index, NMQF; 2011
Recommendation
The reasons for the high prevalence of cardiometabolic disease among African Americans (and minorities in general) are multi factorial. As such, we recommend organizing a focus group in DC, comprised of African Americans who reside in those ‘red’ zip codes illustrated in the above figure.
The purpose of the meeting will be to:
- Gauge the level of understanding of the risk factors associated with cardiometabolic disease
- Identify the factor(s) that are influencing cardiovascular disease in their community
- Discuss what educational activities, social media, etc. would have the greatest impact on improving their understanding of cardiometabolic disease and its associated risk factors
- Identify possible interventions/solutions that could have a positive impact on reducing cardiometabolic disease in their communities
Venue
Focus group facility in DC.
Cost
Contingent on number of focus groups, participants
Estimate: $5,000 – $7500
