While deaths from heart disease nationwide decreased drastically from 1980 through 2014, cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of death in the U.S.
Additionally, county-level data presented in a study in JAMA reveals drastic differences in heart disease mortality. People living in the South are much more likely to die from heart disease than people in other areas of the country.
Researchers used national death records from government databases to estimate county-level mortality rates from cardiovascular diseases from 1980 through 2014.
They found a 50.2 percent decrease nationwide in cardiovascular disease deaths in that time period, but more than 846,000 people still died from heart disease in 2014.
The area with the highest concentration of counties with high cardiovascular disease mortality was in southeastern Oklahoma to eastern Kentucky, along the Mississippi River valley. Low cardiovascular mortality rates were more spread out, including counties surrounding San Francisco, central Colorado, northern Nebraska, northeastern Virginia and southern Florida.
"These findings suggest major efforts are still needed to reduce geographic variation in risk of death due to ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular diseases," the authors wrote.