In the five-state Great Lakes region, heart disease accounted for nearly 113,000 deaths in 2020.  Relative to population size, at 241.2 deaths per 100,000 population, the heart disease death rate in the region was 14% worse than the national average.  This, in fact, gave the Great Lakes region the highest regional heart disease death rate in the U.S. in 2020.  As seen elsewhere in the U.S., in the Great Lakes region there was a wide gap in heart disease death rates between urban and rural populations, with death rates in larger metro areas being lower than in smaller communities and rural areas.  A closer review of data from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) yields the following details about urban vs. rural heart disease death rates in the Great Lakes region:

Urban vs. Rural Heart Disease Death Rates in the Great Lakes Region

County Classification	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
Large Central Metro	29,928	12,789,306	234.0
Large Fringe Metro	26,942	12,712,841	211.9
Medium Metro	18,630	7,561,867	246.4
Small Metro	13,024	5,248,208	248.2
Micropolitan (Nonmetro)	15,869	5,651,494	280.8
NonCore (Nonmetro)	8,551	2,871,194	297.8
Region	112,944	46,834,910	241.2
Nationally	696,962	329,484,123	211.5

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

Report Period: 2020

States in region:  Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin

See the 2013 NCHS Urban-Rural Classification Scheme for additional information on population categories, including a map of which U.S. counties fall in which categories.

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2020 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 February 11, 2023