Work

Association of food environment and cardiovascular mortality

Year: 2020

Type: article

Abstract: Background : The association between healthy dietary habits and cardiovascular health is well established; however, it is unknown whether access to healthy and sustainable food sources correlates with better cardiovascular mortality. Methods : County-level data on Food Environment Index (FEI) for 2014 was retrieved from the County Health Rankings dataset. County-level data on cardiovascular diseases (CVD) mortality was obtained from the death registry files of the National Vital Statistics System. We used a linear regression model to assess the association between FEI and CVD mortality after adjusting for sex and race distributions, urban-rural distribution and median household income. Results : Data were available for 3069 counties. The mean FEI was 7.0 (SD, 1.2) and mean CVD mortality (per 100,000 population) was 252.7 (95% CI, 247.1-258.3) across the United States in 2014. There was a significant inverse association between FEI and adjusted CVD mortality (P <0.001). Every unit increase in FEI corresponded to a decline in CVD mortality of 19.1 per 100,000 population. Conclusions : Higher FEI correlates with reduced CVD mortality. Improving access to healthy sustainable food sources may help decrease cardiovascular mortality.

Source: F1000Research

DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.22986.1

Authors: Khushali Jhaveri, Anand Krishnan, Devika Kir, Kai Chen, Suveen Angraal