BackgroundIn the United States, there are persistent racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality. National efforts have focused on reducing these disparities; however, little is known about the long‐term trends in racial/ethnic disparities in cardiovascular health (CVH).Methods and ResultsWe included 11 285 adults aged ≥20 years from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys survey cycles 1999/2000 through 2011/2012. CVH includes 7 health factors and behaviors—diet, physical activity, smoking status, body mass index, blood pressure, blood glucose, and total cholesterol—each scored as ideal (2 points), intermediate (1 point), or poor (0 points). Overall CVH is a summation of these scores (range, 0–14) points. Age‐adjusted mean CVH scores were calculated by race/ethnicity (non‐Hispanic black, non‐Hispanic white, or Mexican American) and sex for each survey cycle. Non‐Hispanic black women had significantly lower mean CVH scores as compared with non‐Hispanic white women at each survey cycle (difference=0.93; P=0.001 in 2011/2012) and Mexican‐American women had significantly lower mean score as compared with non‐Hispanic white women at almost all survey cycles (difference=0.71; P=0.02 in 2011/2012). Differences between racial/ethnic groups were smaller for men and were mostly nonsignificant.ConclusionsFrom 1999/2000 to 2011/2012, there were enduring disparities in CVH for non‐Hispanic black and Mexican‐American women as compared with non‐Hispanic white women. Disparities that were present in 1999/2000 were present in 2011/2012, though no racial/ethnic differences became more pronounced over time. These findings provide US nationally representative data to evaluate health factors and behaviors of particular concern regarding racial/ethnic disparities in cardiovascular health.

Among US adults aged 51 years and older, loss of wealth over 2 years was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Further research is needed to better understand the possible mechanisms for this association and determine whether there is potential value for targeted interventions.

Objective: To examine whether occupational cognitive requirements, as a marker of adulthood cognitive activity, are associated with late-life cognition and cognitive decline.Methods: Main lifetime occupation information for 7,637 participants aged .65 years of the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP) was linked with standardized data on worker attributes and job characteristics from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). Ratings of cognitive processes required in 10 work-related tasks were used to create a summary measure of occupational cognitive requirements (possible range 0-7). Multivariable-adjusted linear mixed models were used to estimate the association of occupational cognitive requirements score (OCRS) with cognitive function and rate of cognitive decline.Results: Higher OCRS corresponded to significantly better late-life cognitive performance at baseline in 1993 (p , 0.001) and to slower decline in global cognitive function over time (p 5 0.004). Within a genotyped subsample (n 5 4,104), the associations of OCRS with rate of cognitive decline did not differ significantly by APOE e4 carriership (p 5 0.11).Conclusions: Findings suggest that occupational cognitive requirements are associated with better cognition and a slower rate of cognitive decline in older age. Adulthood cognitive activity may contribute to cognitive reserve in late life. Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia affects a large number of older adults for whom there are few effective treatment options available.1 The long duration of the preclinical phase, which is thought to last from at least several years to over a decade 2 and is characterized by a period of decline in cognitive function, has prompted increasing efforts to identify potentially modifiable risk factors from earlier stages in adulthood that affect disease onset and initial progression. A range of mid-adulthood lifestyle risk factors, including adherence to a healthy diet 3 and regular participation in physical activity, 4 are associated with reduced risk of late-onset AD dementia. 5There has been a growing interest in the role of cognitively stimulating activity during adulthood and its potentially protective effect on late-life cognitive decline and AD dementia risk. There is some evidence that engagement in leisure time cognitive activity is associated with higher levels of cognitive functioning in older age. [6][7][8] More recent studies have explored occupationrelated cognitive activity and complexity, but have produced inconsistent findings on whether higher occupation-related cognitive requirements are associated with late-life cognitive decline.9-14 A challenge central to these studies is the measurement of occupation-related cognitive activity, and most studies to date have relied on relatively crude measures, such as broad employment categories.In this study, we used a detailed measure of occupation-related cognitive activity derived from the Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database to test the

Using long-term measures of cumulative blood pressure, instead of single measurements, can modestly improve the ability of cardiovascular disease risk prediction models to correctly classify individuals in terms of their risk for cardiovascular disease.