Doctors often refer to the deadly trinity of heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure) and stroke as cardiovascular disease: All kill African Americans at higher rates than whites. But, fortunately, cardiovascular disease is preventable. Lifestyle issues such as diet, exercise, smoking and obesity fuel the higher disease and death rates of African Americans. By reducing the intake of fatty, sugary foods; embracing exercise in an active lifestyle; stopping smoking; and curbing African American high obesity rates; we can close the heart disease health gap. So will regular preventive care such as seeing your doctors regularly, getting high blood pressure screening and faithfully taking prescribed hypertension medications and/or other treatments.

But physicians need to change their unhealthful behaviors, too. Studies reveal that race influences the chance of receiving essential heart care from doctors. In February 1999, for example, The New England Journal of Medicine revealed a shocking disparity in heart disease management between white and African American women. The retrospective study revealed African American patients matched with white patients for stage of illness and socioeconomic factors were diagnosed later and were less frequently offered standard invasive technology such as coronary angioplasty, coronary artery bypass surgery or clot-busting tissue plasminogen activase (TPA) drugs.

Thanks to the expertise of researchers and to the advocacy by groups such as the International Society for Hypertension in Blacks (ISHIB) and the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC), the picture is slowly improving. For example, the coronary heart disease death rate is declining for African Americans -- from 168 per 100,000 people in 1987 to 140 in 1996, but the disparity persists, because this is less than the decline in whites.