Association between ideal cardiovascular health and multiple disabilities among US adults, BRFSS 2017-2019

Research Objectives: To estimate the association between ideal cardiovascular health (ICVH) and single versus multiple disabilities among US adults stratified into three age-groups of young (18-44 years), midlife (45-64 years), and older adults (≥65 years).

Design: We pooled secondary data from the 2017 and 2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and conducted age-stratified descriptive and multinomial regression analyses.

Setting: The survey included participants from the community.

Participants: We considered all BRFSS participants (≥18 years) responding “no” to these three CVD-related questions for our study resulting in 758,976 respondents without a self-reported history of CVD. Of these 69% (unweighted observations, n=524,088; weighted observations, N=305,513,625) was our final sample after omitting missing data.

Interventions: Using American Heart Association’s 7-component (4 ideal behaviors and 3 ideal health factors) scoring tool, we identified ICVH as a composite score≥5 and also computed the ideal behavioral (score≥3) and ideal health factors (score=3) sub-metrics.

Main Outcome Measures: The outcome, single versus multiple disabilities indicator, was defined using US Census’s disability domains.

Results: For all three groups, prevalence of single/multiple disabilities was significantly lower among those meeting ICVH, ideal behavioral and ideal health factors compared to those that did not. After controlling for covariates, ICVH score≥5 was associated with lower relative risk of single/multiple disabilities in all groups. While both ideal health and ideal behavioral factors were associated with lower relative risk of single/multiple disabilities among all groups, the reduction in risk was the highest for multiple disabilities and ideal behavioral factors among midlife (relative risk ratio (RRR): 0.30, 95% CI: 0.25,0.36) and older adults (RRR: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.33,0.48).

Conclusions: Adults with less than ideal cardiovascular health had a higher relative risk of multiple disabilities. Addressing risk of multiple disabilities of US adults will require effective promotion of ICVH.

Author(s) Disclosures: We do not declare any conflicts of interest.