More African American men and women suffer from hypertension than any other ethnic group in the U.S. — and many of them don’t even know it. Defined as a systolic blood-pressure reading of greater than 120, hypertension presents few or no symptoms. But it kills, all the same. High circulatory tension “was the leading cause of death and disability-adjusted life-years worldwide,” according to the American College of Cardiology. It can lead to strokes and heart disease, blindness and even kidney failure.
In most people, hypertension can be controlled — sometimes with diet and exercise, other times with medication. But African Americans are significantly less likely than whites to have their hypertension controlled. Data from the 2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that only 44 percent of African Americans have controlled hypertension, compared to slightly more than half of whites with the same disease. That means African Americans are up to six times more likely than whites to suffer a fatal stroke, and five times more likely to develop kidney disease.
That disparity has persisted for decades and proven stubbornly difficult to fix, said Michael H. Kanter, executive vice president of the Permanente Federation, Kaiser Permanente’s policy arm, in Oakland, California. But there are bright spots: A 2014 study of elderly enrollees in Medicare Advantage found the racial gap had been virtually erased in Kaiser health plans in the West, where the bulk of Kaiser enrollees reside. Kaiser Permanente had also, by 2011, eliminated disparities between African Americans and whites in controlling levels of LDL cholesterol and glycated hemoglobin, a diagnostic marker of diabetes. More recent data collected on Kaiser Permanente’s national care network by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services showed that the gap in hypertension control between African Americans and whites decreased by 58% from 2009 to 2017 — from 5.3% to 2.2%.
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