The American flag is carried by parade attendees during the New York City Veterans Day Parade on Nov. 11, 2022. Veterans living in historically segregated neighborhoods experienced higher risks of heart attacks and strokes, according to a study published July 11, 2023, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Roan Smith/U.S. Navy)
Veterans in an 80,000-person study experienced higher than expected mortality rates and greater risks of heart attacks and strokes if they lived in a historically segregated neighborhood.
Published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study looked at data from veterans receiving care for preexisting cardiovascular disease at Veterans Affairs hospitals nationwide from Jan. 1, 2016, to Dec. 31, 2019.
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals and the Cleveland VA Medical Center examined the health records of veterans living in historically segregated neighborhoods.
The study used color-coded zones that were set out decades ago as part of redlining, a discriminatory housing practice that was used in the United States from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Authors of the study aimed to gauge the impact of racist housing policies that were outlawed because of judicial rulings and federal legislation generations ago.
“A century-old practice like redlining still affects our nation’s health today,” said Salil Deo, a cardiac surgeon at the VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System and one of the authors of the report.
Living in a historically redlined neighborhood came with a 13% greater rate of death from all causes, and a 14% higher risk of stroke or heart attack among subjects, according to the study.
That elevated risk was present even after researchers considered known cardiovascular risk factors as well as race and ethnicity.
“This study builds on emerging literature linking redlining with a host of present-day health issues,” Sadeer Al-Kindi, another author of the report, said in a statement this week issued by Case Western Reserve University.
During the Great Depression, the federal government began insuring private mortgages to help people buy homes. These efforts included the creation of color-coded maps of U.S. cities based on perceived foreclosure risk.
Green areas, rated A, were seen as safe investments. Red areas, rated D, were seen as hazardous and ineligible for an insured mortgage, author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in a 2014 history of redlining.
The practice separated neighborhoods based on race or ethnicity, led to segregation and discouraged people from investing, Coates wrote in “The Case for Reparations,” a long-form article published in The Atlantic in 2014.
People who live in redlined neighborhoods are more likely to have coronary artery disease, stroke and chronic kidney disease, according to a previous study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2021 as well as another published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
The authors of the study published this week said their findings might not apply to nonveterans, as their subjects were mostly men who had health insurance. They said the specific reasons for the poor health results need further research.
