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

BACKGROUND Formerly incarcerated Americans are believed to have increased risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease, yet the impact of lowerlevel 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. [GRAPHICS] .