Social inequities in cardiovascular disease risk factors in East and West Germany

Uwe Helmert, Andreas Mielck and Elvira Classen

Social Science & Medicine, 1992, vol. 35, issue 10, 1283-1292

Abstract: Social class related differences in prevalence of cardiovascular disease risk factors in Germany were investigated with special emphasis on comparisons between East and West Germany and on time trends. Databases for West Germany are the first and second National Health Survey (survey 1: N=4794, survey 2: N=5315), carried out in the framework of the German Cardiovascular Prevention Study, and for East Germany the first GDR-MONICA project (N=6125). Different social class indices were applied to evaluate social inequities for hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, cigarette smoking, obesity and predicted cardiovascular disease mortality. As a main result, it was found that very similar patterns in the relation between social class characteristics and cardiovascular disease risk factor prevalence occurred for both parts of Germany. Social class gradients were strongest for obesity and weakest for hypercholesterolemia. Analysis of time trends for the period from 1984 to 1988 (for West Germany only) revealed an increase in social inequalities for hypertension in males and cigarette smoking in females. These findings point to the need to focus more on social disadvantages segments in the population when community based health promotion and disease prevention programs are brought into action.

Keywords: social; inequities; cardiovascular; disease; risk; factors; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(92)90181-O
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:35:y:1992:i:10:p:1283-1292

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().