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(Circulation. 2005;111:1203.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

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	STATE OF DISPARITIES IN CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES, by Mensah et al.

 
National health policy planners set an ambitious agenda in Healthy People 2010 by committing to decreasing death and disability in the United States by 25% by 2010. One of the fundamental goals essential to achieving this objective is to eliminate healthcare disparities. In this issue of Circulation, Dr Mensah and colleagues provide the Centers for Disease Control’s most recent data on the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and its risk factors by race and ethnicity. The investigators report that racial/ethnic disparities in cardiovascular disease and risk factors are ubiquitous regionally and nationally. Obesity is common in all Americans but is particularly prevalent in African American women (48.4%) and Mexican American men with a high school education (29.7%). Hypertension prevalence was high in African Americans (41.2%), whereas hypercholesterolemia was high among whites. Hospitalizations for heart failure and stroke were more common in the southeast and in African Americans. Midway in the first decade of the 21st century, the reported data underscore that the United States has tremendous persistent racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and regional disparities in cardiovascular disease. If we are to continue to make major advances in reducing death and disability from cardiovascular disease, we must overcome the extensively documented racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities. See p 1233.

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	RACIAL PROFILING: THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF CORONARY ARTERY BYPASS GRAFT REPORT CARDS, by Werner et al.

 
In the 1990s, several states implemented coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) report cards with the well-intentioned goals of improving CABG care and empowering informed consumer choices. Anecdotally, some observers have voiced apprehensions that the advent of report cards might have hidden costs. Physicians . . . [Full Text of this Article]