Assessing the Relationship Between History of Arrest and Self-reported Cardiovascular Conditions

Abstract

Background: Formerly incarcerated Americans are believed to have increased risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease, yet the impact of lower-level criminal legal system exposures, such as arrests, on cardiovascular health are less clear.

Methods: We explored the relationship between lifetime history of arrest and self-report of ever having been diagnosed with hypertension or a heart condition using data from the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Survey-weighted Poisson regression models with robust variance, adjusted for age group, sex, race/ethnicity, education, past year mental illness, smoking history, and past year substance use disorder, were used to estimate adjusted prevalence ratios (PRs).

Results: Among the 13,583 respondents, 17.0% reported a history of arrest, among whom 45.2% also reported a hypertension diagnosis and 24.4% reported a heart condition. Among those without a history of arrest, 46.7% reported a hypertension diagnosis and 25.2% reported a heart condition diagnosis. The adjusted models did not show evidence that history of arrest is associated with self-reported hypertension (adjusted PR 1.0; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.93, 1.07, P = 0.937) or self-reported heart condition (1.0; 95% CI 0.91, 1.11, P = 0.915).

Conclusions: We did not find evidence that history of arrest, a lower-level criminal legal system exposure, is associated with self-reported hypertension or heart conditions.

Keywords: blood pressure; cardiovascular disease; criminal justice; hypertension; incarceration; national surveys.