PR Newswire | Sep 23, 2020 11:17AM EDT

ValuePenguin.com Study

09/23 10:16 CDT

Heart Disease Fatality is 13% Higher in Southern States According to ValuePenguin.com StudyMississippi leads the nation with double the national average of fatal heart cases NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2020

NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- It may be no surprise to some that heart conditions are still one of the leading causes of death in the United States. However, people living in the South are disproportionately more affected by fatal heart conditions than other areas in the U.S.

ValuePenguin analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on heart disease in the United States and found that the population's susceptibility to heart disease varies wildly depending on state and county. For context, the CDC determined that heart disease killed more than 469,000 middle-aged Americans from 2016 to 2018 - a rate of about 153 per 100,000 people.

Key findings:

* Heart disease is responsible for more fatalities relative to population in the South than the rest of the country - in the South the rate of fatal cases is nearly one-eighth higher than average. * There were 20 states that had higher-than-average rates of deaths from heart disease. Thirteen of these states are located in the South. * Nationally, hypertension accounts for more than half of the total deaths from cardiovascular disease. * Compared to women, middle-aged men are about three times more likely to die from heart attacks or coronary heart disease, while senior men are only about one and a half times more at risk. * In some counties in the United States, the number of fatalities from heart attacks is more than five times greater than average. * The people who are most at risk of heart disease come from socioeconomically underprivileged communities: The poverty rate among the communities that have the highest rates of fatal cases of heart disease is greater than 25% on average.

View full report: Heart Disease in America

About ValuePenguin.com: ValuePenguin.com, part of LendingTree (NASDAQ: TREE), is a personal finance website that conducts in-depth research and provides objective analysis to help guide consumers to the best financial decisions. ValuePenguin focuses on value, assessing whether the return of a particular decision is worth the cost or risk of that option, and how this stacks up with the other possible choices they may have. For more information, please visit www.valuepenguin.com, like our Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter @ValuePenguin.

Media Contact:Nadia Gonzalez (Mrs.)Nadia@LendingTreeNews.com

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SOURCE ValuePenguin.com