The Role of Time-Varying Social and Behavioral Risk Factors for Race-Ethnic and Gender Disparities in Hypertension among Young Adults

Adrianne Frech, University of Akron

More than 600,000 adults died of cardiovascular disease in 2007, and that nearly one in three adults in the United States experiences hypertension, an asymptomatic “silent killer” that often precedes heart attacks and strokes. Because hypertension is a modifiable risk factor cardiovascular disease, particularly for young people, this study draws from waves I-IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to investigate mediating and moderating relationships between time-varying social and behavioral cardiovascular risk factors and race-ethnic disparities in hypertension among young adults ages 25-32. Discrete-time event history models take advantage of four waves of respondents’ health behaviors, social support resources, socioeconomic status, and stress exposure to determine whether these resources mediate race-ethnic and gender differences in early onset of hypertension, as well as whether the influence of these resources on the risk of hypertension operates differently according to race-ethnicity and gender.