In the Mid-Eastern U.S., a region that includes five states and the District of Columbia, heart disease accounted for nearly 117,400 deaths in 2020.  Relative to population size, at 240.7 deaths per 100,000 population, the heart disease death rate in the region was 13.8% above the national average.  This, in fact, gave the Mid-Eastern region the second-worst regional heart disease death rate in the U.S. in 2020.  In a pattern seen throughout the U.S., in the Mid-Eastern region, there was a disparity between heart disease death rates in urban and rural populations, with death rates in larger metro areas being lower than in smaller communities and rural areas.  A closer examination of data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a unit of the CDC, yields the following about urban vs. rural heart disease death rates in the Mid-Eastern U.S.:

Urban vs. Rural Heart Disease Death Rates in the Mid-Eastern U.S.

County Classification	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
Large Central Metro	39,124	16,027,707	244.1
Large Fringe Metro	45,860	20,382,556	225.0
Medium Metro	16,775	6,793,188	246.9
Small Metro	6,939	2,615,582	265.3
Micropolitan (Nonmetro)	6,114	2,074,663	294.7
NonCore (Nonmetro)	2,559	864,132	296.1
Region	117,371	48,757,828	240.7
Nationally	696,962	329,484,123	211.5

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

Report Period: 2020

States in region:  Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania (plus the District of Columbia)

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 15, 2023