Prevalence of heart disease--United States, 2005.

Heart disease has been the leading cause of death in the United States for the past 80 years and is a major cause of disability. Heart disease also results in substantial health-care expenditures; for example, coronary heart disease is projected to cost an estimated 151.6 billion dollars in direct and indirect costs in 2007. Although some self-reported national data are available, state-specific prevalence data for heart disease have not been reported previously. In addition, although racial/ethnic, geographic, and sex differences in death rates for heart disease have been documented, less information has been available regarding the prevalence of persons living with heart disease. To estimate the prevalence of myocardial infarction (MI) and angina/coronary heart disease (CHD) in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), CDC analyzed self-reported data from the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). This report summarizes the results of that analysis and provides the first state-based prevalence estimates of these heart diseases. The results indicated that substantial geographic, racial/ethnic, educational, and sex disparities existed in the prevalence of MI and angina/CHD. To lower the incidence of heart disease and meet the overall Healthy People 2010 goal to eliminate health disparities, public health programs should target disproportionately affected populations.