Among my circle of family and friends, adequate health care seems tied to financial ability – those with insurance (or very excellent well-paying jobs) tend to be much more diligent in getting checkups, preventative care and testing, see the doctor earlier in the illness, and get routine dental visits. They even take all of their medicine (no cutting pills in half or hording the last day or two of a medication just in case they might need it in the future). On the other hand, those that I know without jobs (and there are many in this current economic climate) or the uninsured tend to do just the opposite – checkups are skipped, medicines “stretched” and a visit to the doctor always occurs only after they are one step from a trip to the hospital instead of the doctor and pharmacy.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or government researcher to see that money (or the lack thereof) plays a role in healthcare. But, what is the long-term impact on your health? If your home and lifestyle aren’t being featured on the cover of Lifestyles of the Rick and Famous, are you at a greater risk for heart related (or other illnesses) disease?
Do people from lower-income neighborhoods have a higher risk of heart disease than those who live in more financially affluent neighborhoods?
The question of socioeconomic status and its impact on the risk of developing coronary heart disease (CHD) was explored by a group of French researchers. In a four year study (2000 – 2003), researchers followed the myocardial infarction events (heart attacks) in Strasbourg for persons between the ages of 34 and 74. As a part of the study, researchers examined the role of socioeconomic status (i.e. income, education, occupation) and neighborhood “deprivation” (good, safe, clean, up-scale neighborhoods versus those from the “wrong” side of the tracks), and its relationship to the risk of heart disease in men and women.
Researchers found that a low socioeconomic state and neighborhood deprivation scores increased the risk of a heart attack for both men and women. True to form, men and women responded somewhat differently to the influences of economic status and deprivation. Men had higher rates of myocardial infarction in all deprivation classes (linear movement along the deprivation scale). Their risk of developing heart disease is greater than that of a woman. On the other hand, women were found to be increasingly susceptible to heart attack risk as deprivation levels increase. Women from the poorest neighborhoods had a risk of heart attack which was more than double (almost 2 ½ times greater) their more affluent female counterparts (The rate for men was only 1.24 percent more than their wealthier counterparts).
While researchers were able to document the fact that deprivation and low socioeconomic status increased a woman’s risk of heart disease, they were not able to come to any definite conclusions as to why that risk for women was so much greater for women in deprived neighborhoods. It’s theorized that women from low income areas may have an increased risk of metabolic syndrome due to food choices (let’s face it – high caloric foods like beans and rice are a lot cheaper than health foods), more stressful situations at home and the office (partially due to low education levels), increased depression levels, and higher incidence of single-parents.
Source:
Deguen, Séverine; Lalloue, Benoît; Bard, Denis; Havard, Sabrina; Arveiler, Dominique; Zmirou-Navier, Denis, A Small-area Ecologic Study of Myocardial Infarction, Neighborhood Deprivation, and Sex: A Bayesian Modeling Approach, Epidemiology:
July 2010 - Volume 21 - Issue 4 - pp 459-466, doi: 10.1097/EDE.0b013e3181e09925, http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Fulltext/2010/07000/A_Small_area_Ecologic_Study_of_Myocardial.6.aspx