Your neighborhood in your 20s may shape your heart decades later
A study published in Nature Communications suggests that neighborhood social conditions during early adulthood can influence heart health by midlife. Researchers developed a new index to measure factors like socioeconomic status, food access, and crime rates to predict cardiovascular risk.
Why it matters
This research shifts the focus of cardiovascular health from individual lifestyle choices to the broader impact of environmental and social determinants.
Where a person lives during early adulthood may influence their heart health decades later. A recent study found that people exposed to more unfavorable neighborhood social conditions when they were young adults had a greater likelihood of developing coronary artery calcification by midlife. Coronary artery calcification is an important marker of early cardiovascular disease. The findings were published in Nature Communications.
Northwestern Medicine researchers identified the connection using a new index designed to capture several neighborhood social determinants of health at once. The measure incorporates socioeconomic conditions, access to food, opportunities for physical activity and local crime rates.
"This study helps move the field forward by shifting from a focus on individual lifestyle risk factors to a more comprehensive understanding of how neighborhood context shapes health," said Lifang Hou, MD, PhD, professor of Preventive Medicine and of Pediatrics, who was senior author of the study.
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