Heart Disease Becoming an Ailment of the Poor

Heart disease is increasingly becoming an ailment of the poor, said Dr. Kenneth Shine, dean of the UCLA Medical School and current president of the American Heart Assn.

“By the end of this decade, it’s likely that socioeconomic status may be one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular disease,” he said last week at a forum for science writers here. Shine called for more public education to reduce heart disease among the poor.

Although the overall heart disease death rate among Americans dropped 39% between 1963 and 1984, he said, studies show that upper- and middle-class whites have experienced the greatest improvement in cardiovascular health while poor people and blacks have the highest rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and strokes.

Shine said the problem is not access to health care. Rather, educational efforts to reduce heart disease fatalities--by quitting cigarette smoking, improving diet and controlling high blood pressure, obesity and stress--have been more successful among whites than blacks, and more successful among white-collar workers than blue-collar workers, Shine said.