Abstract Body (Do not enter title and authors here): BACKGROUND
Deaths from congenital heart disease (CHD) in children have been decreasing in the United States. We examined the differences in mortality trends between Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and Non-Hispanic White (NHW) infants.
METHODS
We retrospectively analyzed publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER). The data was obtained from the linked birth/infant deaths from 2005 to 2019. We evaluated all infant deaths up to 1 year of age with the cause of death listed as CHD (International classification of diseases, 10^th revision (ICD-10) codes Q20-Q26 (except atrial septal defect, Q21.1 and patent ductus arteriosus, Q25. CHD infant mortality rate (IMR) was calculated per 100,000 live births. Race was ascertained based on death certificate reporting. Joinpoint regression was used to examine CHD-IMR by year, including stratification by NHB vs NHW, and neonatal vs postneonatal. The difference between NHB and NHW CHD-IMR was ascertained via the Mann-Whitney U test. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS
Out of 60,243,988 live births, there were 19,004 CHD-related infant deaths. The characteristics of the study population are displayed in Table 1. The overall CHD-IMR declined from 36.1 to 27.0 per 100,000 live births (25.2%) with an average annual percentage change (AAPC) of -2.1 [95% CI -2.6, -1.572] (Figure 1). The CHD-IMR was significantly higher in NHB than in NHW (40 vs 29.3; P<0.0001) and this difference remained when the mortality rate was stratified by neonatal and post-neonatal periods. The CHD-IMR decreased significantly in NHW [AAPC: -2%; 95% CI: -2.5, -1.5%], but not in NHB [AAPC of -1.4%, 95% CI, -3.0, 0.3%]. The NHB-to-NHW CHD-IMR ratio, a measure of CHD-IMR disparity averaged 1.4 over the study period [AAPC: 0.8%; 95% CI: -0.2, 1.8%] (Figure 2).

CONCLUSIONS
The CHD-IMR declined significantly for NHW, but not in NHB in the US from 2005 to 2019. The CHD-IMR was higher in NHB than in NHW. There was no significant change in the NHB-to-NHW CHD-IMR ratio, signifying no change in the disparity that exists between NHB and NHW IMR. These findings may have implications for patient care and public health policymaking. They lay the groundwork for additional studies to determine and understand the drivers behind these findings such as in prenatal diagnosis.