Nearly 697,000 deaths in the U.S. were attributable to heart disease in 2020.  With a death rate of 211.5 deaths per 100,000 population in 2020, heart disease was the leading cause of death in the United States that year, accounting for roughly 20.6% of all deaths in the United States.  At the state level, there was considerable disparity in the heart disease death rate.  In the ten states with the lowest incidence of heart disease-related deaths, the death rate ranged from 17% to nearly 41% below the national average.  A closer examination of data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a unit of the CDC, revealed the following statistics about the ten states with the lowest heart disease death rates in 2020:

Ten States with the Lowest Heart Disease Death Rates

State/Deaths	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
Idaho	3,191	1,826,913	174.7
Oregon	7,371	4,241,507	173.8
Texas	50,281	29,360,759	171.3
Massachusetts	11,781	6,893,574	170.9
California	66,538	39,368,078	169.0
Washington	12,084	7,693,612	157.1
Minnesota	8,562	5,657,342	151.3
Colorado	8,023	5,807,719	138.1
Utah	4,251	3,249,879	130.8
Alaska	915	731,158	125.1
Total	172,997	104,830,541	165.0
U.S.	696,962	329,484,123	211.5

(*) number of heart disease deaths per 100,000 population

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2019 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2021. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 1999-2020, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. Accessed on November 30, 2022

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