The Internet, parks, train tracks can influence the risk of stroke in the area

New research has found that folks living in neighborhoods with high rates of environmental and socioeconomic problems could also be at greater risk of heart disease and twice as prone to have a stroke.

The testpublished Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that a mix of chronic environmental and social problems, including higher rates of pollution and unemployment, contributed to widening disparities in cardiovascular health, and that environmental aspects themselves played a major role.

“Our study is one of the first to examine the impact of a combination of social and environmental factors and to look at the complex interconnections between them,” senior creator Dr. Sarju Ganatra said in his study Press Release. Ganatra, a cardiologist, is vice chair of medicine for research and director of the Cardio-Oncology Program and the South Asian Cardio-Metabolic Program at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Recent research has shown that neighborhoods with more social and environmental disadvantages have higher rates of heart problems and related risk aspects. In the recent study, researchers wanted to research what role environmental aspects play, each independently and in combination with socioeconomic aspects.

For the purposes of the study, adversarial environmental impacts included air and water pollution, the presence of potentially hazardous or toxic sites, few recreational parks and heavy road traffic, and the presence of railways and airports. Social aspects included racial and ethnic minority status, income, education and employment levels, housing status, and access to the Internet and health care.

The evaluation found that residents of the most environmentally and socially vulnerable neighborhoods were 1.68 times more prone to have coronary heart disease and greater than twice as prone to have a stroke in comparison with residents of the least vulnerable neighborhoods. People living in the most vulnerable areas were more prone to have type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, hypertension and obesity.

“I was amazed to see the close connections and complex interaction between social and environmental factors that influence health,” Ganatra said. “We were able to demonstrate their “double impact” on health outcomes. Moreover, we were further amazed by the undeniable fact that even after controlling for socioeconomic aspects, environmental aspects played a key and independent role in determining various heart diseases and other related health outcomes.”

The highest percentages of black and Latino adults lived in the most environmentally and socially vulnerable neighborhoods (30% and 48%, respectively), while the least vulnerable neighborhoods lived in the lowest percentages of racial and ethnic minorities (5% and 11%).

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Scientists, Ganatra said, imagine that reversing the impact of adversarial environmental and socioeconomic conditions would require a multi-pronged approach that features reducing exposure to air pollution and establishing policies to deal with poverty, urban revitalization, public education, job creation and reasonably priced housing, in addition to increasing access to high-quality health care.

“Our goal is to empower the healthcare community to better inform patients about the environmental factors they encounter on a daily basis,” he said. “Patients, in turn, gain the opportunity to reduce exposure to harmful environmental conditions, such as exposure to harmful chemicals and air pollutants, to minimize health hazards and mitigate health risks.”