North Florida is part of the stroke belt

Florida is the only State in the southeastern United States that is not part of the "stroke belt." The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health, defines the stroke belt as those States with an age-adjusted stroke mortality rate for the years 1979 to 1981 that is more than 10 percent above the national annual rate of 40.3 per 100,000 population. By reproducing at the county level the methods that were used at the State level to describe the stroke belt, the authors identified a group of 34 contiguous northern Florida counties (population exceeds 2 million) with an age-adjusted stroke mortality rate of 47.2 per 100,000--higher than 3 of the 11 stroke belt States. They concluded that north Florida is part of the stroke belt and should be included as a priority region for stroke prevention programs. County-level analyses that are methodologically comparable with those used by NHLBI to describe the stroke belt may be a useful technique for identifying high stroke-rate regions within States which might be missed when needs assessment is based only on State-level data.