Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders have third highest CVD mortality rate in U.S.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality rates among people who are Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders may have been masked by considering that population with people of Asian heritage overall.
Adults of Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (NHPI) descent have substantially higher mortality rates from cardiovascular disease (CVD) than other people who are considered Asian and the third highest CVD mortality rate in the U.S., a study of nationwide mortality data found.
CDC researchers studied mortality data from a national database for adults older than age 35 years to describe CVD mortality among NHPI adults. Cause of death was identified using data from the International Classification of Diseases and stratified according to race listed on death certificates. The findings were published by Annals of Internal Medicine on Oct. 15.
The study tabulated 10,870 CVD deaths between 2018 to 2022 (72.6% from heart disease; 19.0% from cerebrovascular disease) among NHPI adults, with an estimated mean of 2,174 deaths per year. The CVD age-standardized mortality rate was 1.5 times higher for NHPI adults than for Asian adults (369.6 deaths per 100,000 persons [95% CI, 362.4 to 376.7] vs. 243.9 deaths per 100,000 persons [95% CI, 242.6 to 245.2], respectively), and NHPI adults had the third highest age-standardized mortality rate in the country, after Black adults (558.8 deaths per 100,000 persons [95% CI, 557.4 to 560.3]) and White adults (423.6 deaths per 100,000 persons [95% CI, 423.2 to 424.1]).
The results signal a need for continued disaggregation of the NHPI population in public health research and surveillance to clarify their health status, appropriately allocate prevention resources, guide prevention strategies, and achieve equitable health outcomes, the study authors said.
An accompanying editorial described the study as an incremental update to knowledge about CVD mortality rates in the NHPI population and called for researchers to move past “the issue of disaggregation and explore more effective tools and nuanced approaches to disentangle the construct of race and ethnicity as only one factor that may influence the health status of the increasingly diverse U.S. population.”