| Summary: | <br><strong>Background<br></strong>
The American Heart Association developed the Life's Simple 7 metric for defining cardiovascular health. Little is known about the association of co-occurring social risk factors on ideal cardiovascular health.
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Methods<br></strong>
Using data on 11,467 adults aged ≥ 25 years from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2006, we examined the association between cumulative social risk and ideal cardiovascular health in US adults. A cumulative risk score (range 0 to 3 or 4) was created by summing four social risk factors (low family income, low education level, minority race, and single-living status). Ideal levels for each component in Life's Simple 7 (blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, BMI, smoking, physical activity, and diet) were used to create an ideal Life's Simple 7 score [0–1 (low), 2, 3, 4, and 5–7 (high)].
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Results<br></strong>
Adults with low income (odds ratio [OR] = 0.30 [95% CI 0.23–0.39]), low education [0.22 (0.16–0.28)], who are non-white (0.44 [0.36–0.54]) and single-living [0.79 (0.67–0.95)] were less likely to have 5–7 versus 0 ideal Life's Simple 7 scores after adjustment for age and sex. Adults were less likely to attain 5–7 versus 0 ideal Life's Simple 7 scores as exposure to the number of social risk factors increased [OR (95% CI) of 0.58 (0.49–0.68); 0.27 (0.21–0.35); and 0.19 (0.14–0.27) for cumulative social risk scores of 1, 2, and 3 or 4, respectively, each versus 0].
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Conclusions<br></strong>
US adults with an increasing number of socially risk factors, were progressively less likely to attain ideal levels of cardiovascular health factors.
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