The natural history of cardiovascular health in U.S. populations

描述（由申请人提供）：理想心血管健康（CVH）是美国心脏协会最近定义和采用的一个新概念，旨在制定到2020年及以后促进健康和减少疾病的国家目标。CVH强调在整个生命过程中保持低风险状态，并通过对七个CVH指标（不吸烟、体重、体力活动、饮食、总胆固醇、血压和血糖）的测量和分类（理想、中等、差）来实施。尽管在整个生命周期中维持理想的CVH可以消除70%的美国心血管疾病（CVD）流行，但只有不到1%的美国人成功地保持所有七个CVH指标的理想水平。次优CVH特征在美国少数族裔群体中尤为普遍，他们比非少数族裔同龄人更早获得中等和较低水平的CVH指标。然而，少数民族人口成员在理想、中等和较差CVH指标水平之间过渡的年龄尚未被描述。CVH指标从理想到中等和较差水平的早期转变与心血管发病率和死亡率密切相关，这一事实使这一健康差异研究具有一定的紧迫性。一个平行的需要是估计维持理想水平的可能性适度但可实现的增加对整个人口的好处

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) is a novel concept recently defined and adopted by the American Heart Association to set national goals for health promotion and disease reduction through 2020 and beyond. CVH emphasizes the maintenance of a low-risk profile throughout the life course and is operationalized through measurement and classification (ideal; intermediate; poor) of seven CVH metrics (nonsmoking, body weight, physical activity, diet, total cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose). Although maintenance of ideal CVH across the lifespan may eliminate ¿ 70% of the U.S. cardiovascular disease (CVD) epidemic, fewer than 1% of Americans successfully maintain ideal levels of all seven CVH metrics. Suboptimal CVH profiles are especially prevalent among U.S. minority groups, who attain intermediate and poor levels of CVH metrics earlier in life than their non-minority counterparts. However, the ages at which members of minority populations transition between ideal, intermediate and poor levels of CVH metrics have not been described. The fact that early transitions from ideal to intermediate and poor levels of CVH metrics have been strongly and consistently associated with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality lends some urgency to this line of health disparities research. A parallel need is estimation of the populatio-wide benefits of modest, but achievable increases in the probability of maintaining ideal levels of CVH metrics across the life course, as the very high prevalence of intermediate or poor CVH metric levels in U.S. populations makes complete elimination of these two classifications highly unlikely. However, these two knowledge gaps remain unaddressed, likely reflecting a lack of large, contemporary, and longitudinal population-based studies that include the major U.S. race/ethnic groups and cover the entire at-risk age epochs that span adolescence to late adulthood. In this application we respond to these challenges by leveraging extant cross-sectional data and state of the art Markov models to estimate the race/ethnic- and sex-stratified age-specific probabilities of transitioning between ideal, intermediate and poor levels of CVH metrics among approximately 35,000 African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, and Caucasian U.S. participants. The estimated transition probabilities will then be merged with results from published intervention and longitudinal cohort studies to calculate race/ethnic- and sex- specific reductions in CVD associated with interventions that increase the proportion of the U.S. population maintaining ideal CVH. Together, results from this study will inform public health and intervention programs aimed at promoting ideal CVH in the age groups most at risk for its loss. A focus on African American, Hispanic/Latinos, and American Indian populations adds further significance to this innovative proposal, as these populations attain intermediate and poor CVH profiles earlier than European Americans and shoulder elevated burdens of the downstream cardio-, renal- and cerebrovascular disease manifestations.