Is there an association between neighborhood characteristics and incident cardiovascular disease in post-menopausal women residing in San Diego County?
This paper examines the association between distinct neighborhood characteristics (i.e., access to food, walking for transportation, access to recreational resources, and neighborhood socioeconomic status) and incident myocardial infarction in post-menopausal women in San Diego County. Built environment measures were created around participants' residential address in the half, one and three mile buffers. Survival analyses investigated the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and incident cardiovascular disease and walking in five, 196 post-menopausal women over 50 years of age. The number of grocery stores in the half mile buffer (HR: 1.174), the number of restaurants in the half mile buffer (HR: 1.182), and in the one mile buffer (HR: 1.155), number of convenience stores (tertile 2 HR: 0. 616) percent Whites in the half (tertile 2 HR: 0.594; tertile 3 HR: 1.075) and one mile buffers (tertile 2 HR: 0.582; tertile 3 HR: 1.029) were each associated with the risk of MI, after adjustment for age, ethnicity, family history of MI, hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking, diabetes, BMI, enrollment status in the hormone therapy clinical trial, and family income. In general, although there were some significant associations, the results of the study were essentially null, and did not support the hypothesis that neighborhood characteristics were associated with incident cardiovascular disease. More studies are needed in this area to address this issue.
