Difference of factors affecting cardiovascular disease prevalence and mortality in communities in Korea

The purpose of the study was to examine various variables affecting the cardiovascular diseases prevalence and mortality and to determine what specific variables have more effects on prevalence rates and mortality rates differently. For the study, we analyzed the Community Health Survey from 253 regions in 2011 and Regional Statistics Annual Reports. For socioeconomic indicators, we examined sex ratio, average age, high school graduation rate, and community deprivation rate. As for the external health indicators, ratio of welfare budget to the community budget, number of hospital beds /1,000 people and number of doctors/10,000 people were included for analysis. The internal health indicators were standardized rates of stress-awareness, non treatment, and health examination. The health behavior indicators included for analysis were standardized rates of current smoking, binge drinking, physical activity, and healthy diet. The health level indicators were standardized rates of self reports on hypertension or diabetes diagnosis experience by physician, and age-standardized mortality. We applied the principal components analysis and conducted logistic regression analysis. The diagnosis experience rate of hypertension or diabetes in the regions with less external health indicators was 2.0 times higher than the rate in the regions with more external health indicators. The diagnosis rate of hyper tension or diabetes in the regions with bad internal health indicators was 2.6 times more than the rate in the regions with good internal health indicators. Also, the diagnosis rate in the regions with poor health behaviors was 2.3 times higher than the rate in the other regions with good health behaviors. Age-standardized mortality in the regions with lower socio-economic level was 3.8 times higher than the rate in the regions with higher socio-economic level. To improve the overall health status in a region, the results indicated that we might need to consider not only on promoting the individual health behaviors, but also on enhancing other variables such as external and internal health variables as well as socioeconomic indicators.