Cardiovascular Disease Mortality Patterns in Georgia and North Carolina

economic subregion in Georgia and North Carolina had some of the lowest U.S. death rates for middle-aged white persons during 1949-51 for all cardiovascular diseases, coronary heart dis¬ ease alone, and all causes.Some of the plains areas of the Carolinas and Georgia, however, had the highest rates (1).Geographic differ¬ ences in mortality rates thus provide a basis for epidemiologic or ecological studies of cardio¬ vascular diseases.The study reported here was undertaken to (a) test the hypothesis that the general pattern of death rates for cardiovascular diseases per- sists for a number of years, (b) describe more precdsely the geographic areas with extremely high or extremely low rates, (c) develop methods for collecting and classifying vital data, and (d) identify factors associated with death rates, as a first step in the search for causal factors responsible for geographic differences in these rates. MethodsStandard vital statistics procedures were used, with modifications as needed.The county of usual residence is the basic unit for which spe¬ cial tabulations were made by the State health departments of Georgia and North Carolina.A number of subtotals were checked and found to agree with regular State tabulations (2jS) antl within 0.5 percent of National Center for Health Statistics tabulations (4).Age-sexrace-specific rates were computed for 10-year age groups, 25 years and over, using the average of the 1950 and 1960 censuses as the population at risk (5,6).