Do racial and geographic differences in hypertension awareness, treatment, and control explain disparities in stroke mortality?
Improving blood pressure control among Black patients is a promising strategy to reduce racial disparities in stroke mortality, while geographic disparities in stroke mortality are likely driven by factors other than hypertension management.
These findings suggest that interventions to improve blood pressure control among blacks are promising to reduce the racial disparity in stroke mortality. The lack of substantial geographic differences in hypertension awareness and the trend toward better treatment and control in the Stroke Belt suggest that differences in hypertension management may not be a major contributor to the geographic disparity in stroke mortality.
Howard et al. (Thu,) studied this question.