Besides "driving while black," and the more recently coined "laughing while black," new research has revealed another activity people of color would be particularly wise to avoid: suffering a heart attack.
The American Heart Association journal Circulationpublished today the latest study revealing health disparities among Americans of different races. It finds that, in a large sample, white Americans lived an average of 6.4 years following a heart attack, while black patients lived an average of 5.6 years.
Unexpectedly, the gap was much higher at the upper end of the socioeconomic ladder than the lower one. Among Americans living in well-off neighborhoods, post-heart-attack life expectancy was seven years for whites, compared to 6.3 for blacks. Among those living in the poorest areas, racial differences in life expectancy were quite small: 5.6 years for white patients, and 5.4 for blacks.
[For more of this story, written by Tom Jacobs, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...t-attack-while-black]
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