{"doi":"10.2147/nrr.s499734","title":"Discrepancies in Cardiovascular Disease Risk Perception Among African American Emerging Adults","abstract":"Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) disproportionately affects African Americans residing in the southern United States. While often diagnosed later in adulthood, CVD develops over time and risk factors emerge early in life. Perceptions of disease risk significantly influence health behaviors, yet young adults often underestimate their susceptibility. Objective: This study compares CVD risk perception to actual CVD risk among African American emerging adults (AAEAs). Methods: Using an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach guided by a situation-specific theory, we assessed CVD risk perception, objective CVD risk based on the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 metrics, and CVD knowledge in 28 AAEAs enrolled at a southeaster historically Black college/university. Descriptive statistics informed the selection of 16 participants for interviews to explore the reasons behind their perceptions and reactions to their objective risk assessment. These 16 participants were intentionally selected to reflect the distribution of participants across the perceived versus objective CVD risk categories represented in the full sample. Results: Most participants underestimated their cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Specifically, 16 of 28 participants (57.14%) perceived their risk to be low; however, only 4 of these 16 individuals (25%) accurately assessed their risk. Among those with a low perceived risk, 11 (68.8%) were found to have a moderate objective risk, and 1 participant (6.3%) was classified as having a high risk. Upon learning their actual CVD risk, participants’ responses supported three primary themes: emotional awareness, personal analysis, and planned action. Conclusion: Findings reflect a need to integrate personalized, culturally relevant CVD awareness and prevention strategies for AAEAs. Future research should involve larger cohorts to refine interventions that bridge the gap between perceived and actual CVD risk. Plain Language Summary: The diagnosis of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in African American adults occurs later than other populations. In addition to late diagnoses, vascular changes and damage occur before clinical manifestations or diagnoses are received. We studied African American emerging adults (AAEAs) because young people form lifelong habits during this 18– 25-year-old period. It is also a time that we may help AAEAs recognize the impact of their behaviors and change negative behaviors to prevent CVD. We surveyed 28 AAEAs at a southeastern HBCU to determine their perceived heart disease risk and objective heart health status using the American Heart Association’s Life Essential 8 measures. A subset of the group was selected for personal interviews to seek their thoughts after learning their objective CVD risk. More than half of the participants (57.14%) thought their risk was low, but only 25% of those with low perceived risk were actually right, suggesting that AAEAs may underestimate their CVD risk. We found three primary themes participants expressed: emotional awareness, personal analysis, and planned action. Our small descriptive study is the beginning of how helping participants understand their objective CVD risk may help them understand the need for change and further facilitate behavioral change. Keywords: cardiovascular disease, African American emerging adults, risk perception, health perception, heart health, CVD prevention, health disparities, Life’s Essential 8, CVD risk, young adult health, behavior change","journal":"Nursing Research and Reviews","year":2025,"id":552820,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9619,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":342053,"name":"Gayenell Magwood","orcid":"0000-0002-2451-4888","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":332697,"name":"Demetrius A. Abshire","orcid":"0000-0002-4234-128X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1073929,"name":"Abbas Tavakoli","orcid":"0000-0003-2527-7017","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1449152,"name":"Gloria S. McCutcheon","orcid":"0000-0001-6772-4749","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":591910,"name":"Coretta Jenerette","orcid":"0000-0002-9851-4768","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1142789,"name":"Shannon Bright Smith","orcid":"0000-0001-7057-7073","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":88,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:54:37.527189Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}