Abstract Body (Do not enter title and authors here): Background: Race and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage are linked to worse health outcomes in heart failure, but studies have not specifically focused on patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).
Research Question: Is race associated with all-cause mortality among patients with HFpEF and does the area-level poverty moderate this association?
Methods: ICD diagnostic codes for HFpEF were used to identify patients with first hospitalizations for HFpEF in University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) Medicine EHR data from 2017-2023. Demographics, comorbidities, and laboratory data were extracted at admission. Patient zip codes were merged with Census zip code poverty data. All-cause mortality was ascertained in the EHR. Multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazard models examined the association between race and all-cause mortality and interaction between race and zip-level poverty ratio, dichotomized at the median.
Results: Between 2017-2023, 14,043 adults had a first hospitalization for HFpEF at UAB; 37% were African American (AA), 58% white, 4.5% from other race/ethnicities. Half resided in high poverty areas (19% of area residents with income below the median poverty level). Compared to whites, AA adults with HFpEF were more likely to be younger, women, reside in high-poverty areas, and have hypertension, diabetes, obesity, worse kidney function and higher brain-natriuretic peptide at admission (Table). Over a median follow-up of 2.7 years [IQR: 0.9-4.9 years], there were 3,747 deaths; 2146 (26.2%) among whites, 1447 (27.8%) among AAs, and 154 (24.3%) among other ethnicities. AA adults had increased all-cause mortality compared to whites, with an adjusted HR 1.14 [95% CI: 1.06-1.23, p=0.001]. The race* poverty interaction p-value was 0.02, indicating that the association between race and all-cause mortality was significantly more pronounced among those residing in higher poverty areas (Table). This was not observed for AA adults in lower poverty areas or for other ethnicities.
Conclusion: In this study, AA patients with HFpEF, residing in high poverty areas, had higher all-cause mortality rates compared to white patients. No racial differences in mortality were observed in lower poverty areas.