Cardiovascular Health and Diabetes Prevalence in Minnesota
This page provides data on some common chronic conditions in Minnesota, including diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. Prevalence shows the percent of adults in Minnesota who reported having these chronic conditions to Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a national telephone survey.
Chronic conditions
Chronic conditions are health conditions or diseases that can last a year or more and may require ongoing medical treatment. They may also impact your physical health, mental well-being, daily life, and ability to do the activities you love.
Chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease are all tied very closely to where you live and work, your culture, and your daily activities. Healthy behaviors also play a role. Making healthy choices as much as possible can reduce your risk of developing a chronic condition. It can also help you feel healthier, enjoy life, and live longer.
For more info, visit About Chronic Conditions. Learn more about different chronic conditions below:
Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects how your body turns food into energy
Most of the food you eat is broken down into sugar (also called glucose) and released into your bloodstream. Your pancreas makes a hormone called insulin, which acts like a key to let the blood sugar into your body's cells for use as energy.
If you have diabetes, your body either doesn't make enough insulin or can't use up the insulin it makes as well as it should. When there isn't enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream, which over time can cause serious health problems such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease.
For more info, visit Diabetes Basics.
High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a condition in which the pressure of the blood against the blood vessel walls is too strong. High blood pressure usually does not have any symptoms.
When left untreated, high blood pressure can cause damage to the blood vessels and lead to other problems, including heart disease, stroke, and kidney disease.
For more info, visit About High Blood Pressure.
Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that's found in all your cells and is necessary to help your body function properly. Your liver makes all the cholesterol you need. The remainder of the cholesterol in your body comes from foods from animals, like meet and dairy.
There are two types of cholesterol: LDL ("bad") cholesterol, and HDL ("good") cholesterol. Too much of the bad kind, or not enough of the good kind, increases the risk that cholesterol will slowly build up in the inner walls of your arteries. High cholesterol doesn't have any obvious symptoms that you can feel, but it can increase your risk of conditions that do have symptoms, like heart attack or stroke.
For more info, visit About Cholesterol.
How to use the data
This dashboard allows you to view the percent of people in Minnesota who report having certain common chronic conditions. You may choose to view crude or age-adjusted percentages. Visit How to Use Chronic Disease Data to find out which type of data is most appropriate for your needs.
Chronic condition prevalence in Minnesota
Ethnicity and race
Minnesota has some of the biggest health disparities in the country, between whites and people of color and American Indians. These health differences have in part resulted from structural racism, which refers to racism built into systems and policies, rather than individual prejudice. Systemic racism and discrimination-related stress also impacts Black, American Indian, and other marginalized communities, putting them at higher risk of chronic conditions.
For more information about how MDH shares race and ethnicity data, visit How to Use Chronic Disease Data
Additional factors influencing health
Health is created where people live, work, and play. Factors such as being able to find and afford healthy food, experiencing discrimination and violence, or having safe housing and transportation, quality education, and a trusted support systems all contribute to your health. View data by some of these factors below.
Trend data
The chart below shows how the percent of people reporting these conditions has changed over time. The grey shaded areas show variation in the values and can help you decide if there has been a meaningful change. To learn more about to interpret this data, visit How to Use Chronic Disease Data.
Data source
These results are analyses conducted by the Minnesota Department of Health based on data from the Minnesota Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey. The survey is a weighted population-based survey of health behaviors of adults residing in Minnesota.
These measures are based on questions in the BRFSS survey asking if the respondent has ever been told by a doctor, nurse or other health professional that they have the condition of interest. We report the (weighted) proportion of adults that responded yes. Because these estimates are from a survey of a small portion of the population, the 95% confidence intervals are also presented. A 95% confidence interval is a statistic which means that we are 95% confident that the actual value of the estimate is within the range. This also helps us decide if estimates are statistically-different from each other, such as when comparing years, or race groups.
For more information
- Income, Employment and Diabetes in Minnesota (PDF). In Minnesota, adults who live in low-income households are more likely to report having diabetes.
Contact us
For more information, contact health.heart@state.mn.us