Women’s Heart Disease & Blood Pressure Statistics: What the Data Shows

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States. Yet fewer than half of women know it, and most women with high blood pressure don’t have it under control.

How common is high blood pressure at your age? How do heart attack symptoms differ in women, and what actually brings blood pressure down? This page gathers the most reliable answers in one place.

The numbers come from the CDC and its National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the American Heart Association (AHA), the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and peer-reviewed studies. It’s written for women 25 and up.

Every figure links to its original source at the bottom of the page. Data last checked November 2026.

Jump to a sectionIn this article16 sections

1. Key Heart Disease and Blood Pressure Statistics for Women at a Glance
2. Heart Disease: The Leading Cause of Death in Women
3. How Many Women Have Heart Disease?
4. Do Women Know Heart Disease Is Their Top Killer?
5. High Blood Pressure in Women by Age
6. Blood Pressure Awareness, Treatment and Control
7. Heart Attack Symptoms in Women vs. Men
8. Stroke in Women
9. High Blood Pressure in Pregnancy
10. Menopause and Heart Risk
11. Weight, Sleep, Stress and Your Heart
12. What Helps Lower Blood Pressure
13. What These Numbers Mean for You
14. How to Cite These Statistics
15. Sources
16. Frequently Asked Questions

Key Heart Disease and Blood Pressure Statistics for Women at a Glance

• Heart disease killed 304,970 U.S. women in 2023, about 1 in every 5 female deaths.¹
• 44.1% of women 20 and older (61.9 million) have some form of cardiovascular disease, counting high blood pressure.³
• Only 44% of women knew heart disease is their leading cause of death in 2019, down from 65% in 2009.⁵
• 44.6% of U.S. women have high blood pressure, compared with 50.8% of men.⁶
• High blood pressure climbs from 16.4% of women ages 18 to 39 to 70.6% of women 60 and older.⁶
• Only 22.8% of women with high blood pressure have it under control.⁶
• About 1 in 3 women with high blood pressure (36.4%) don’t know they have it.⁶
• 42.0% of women hospitalized for a heart attack arrived without chest pain, compared with 30.7% of men.⁸
• Stroke killed 91,719 women in 2023, more than half (56.4%) of all U.S. stroke deaths.³
• About 1 in 5 women who reach 55 without a stroke will have one later in life, compared with about 1 in 6 men.⁹
• High blood pressure in pregnancy rose from 13.3% of delivery hospital stays in 2017 to 15.9% in 2019.¹⁰
• Isometric exercise such as wall sits lowered resting blood pressure by 8.24/4.00 mm Hg on average across 270 trials.¹⁴

Heart Disease: The Leading Cause of Death in Women

According to the CDC, heart disease caused the deaths of 304,970 U.S. women in 2023, about 1 in every 5 female deaths.¹ It remained the top cause of death for all Americans in 2024, with 683,491 deaths.²

Cardiovascular disease, which adds stroke and other conditions of the heart and blood vessels, caused 433,254 deaths among women in 2023. That’s 47.3% of all cardiovascular deaths.³

Cause (2023)	Women’s deaths	Share of all
All CVD	433,254	47.3%
Coronary disease	137,252	39.3%
Stroke	91,719	56.4%
High BP	68,015	51.2%
Heart failure	46,694	52.0%
Heart attack	36,916	39.5%

• Share of all means women’s share of total U.S. deaths from that cause. High BP means deaths with high blood pressure as the underlying cause.³
• After adjusting for age, women’s cardiovascular death rate was 180.2 per 100,000, compared with 263.0 for men.³
• Women die of stroke, high blood pressure and heart failure in larger numbers than men partly because they live longer. Per person, their age-adjusted rates are lower.³

You may have read that heart disease kills a woman every 80 seconds. That figure is a rate worked out from older death counts, not a separate measurement, and it shifts every year.

Using 2023 counts, heart disease works out to about one woman every 103 seconds, and all cardiovascular disease to about one every 73 seconds.^1,3 Either way, it’s the biggest single threat to women’s lives.

How Many Women Have Heart Disease?

The AHA’s 2026 statistics update uses national exam data from 2021 to 2023. These figures cover adults 20 and older:^3,4

Ages 20+	Women	Men
Any CVD	44.1%	53.7%
Coronary disease	3.7%	6.9%
Past heart attack	1.6%	3.8%
Past stroke	2.6%	3.3%

• Any CVD includes high blood pressure, which is why the share is so high. That’s 61.9 million women and 68.7 million men.³
• About 3.4 million women (2.1%) live with heart failure.³
• Cardiovascular disease affected 59.5% of non-Hispanic Black women, 43.5% of non-Hispanic White women, 40.7% of Asian women and 38.6% of Hispanic women.³
• The average age at a first heart attack was 72.0 for women and 65.6 for men, based on 2005–2014 data.³

Do Women Know Heart Disease Is Their Top Killer?

The AHA has surveyed U.S. women about heart disease since 1997. Its online surveys of women 25 and older, 1,158 women in 2009 and 1,345 in 2019, found awareness falling.⁵

Survey	2009	2019
Knew it’s #1 killer	65%	44%

• Awareness dropped at every age except 65 and older. The steepest drops were among women 25 to 34, Hispanic women and non-Hispanic Black women.⁵
• Women with high blood pressure were less likely than other women to know heart disease is the leading cause of death.⁵
• In 2019, women were more likely than in 2009 to wrongly name breast cancer as their top killer, especially younger women.⁵
• Awareness of heart attack warning signs also fell.⁵

Learn the signs in my guide to heart disease symptoms in women.

High Blood Pressure in Women by Age

The CDC’s NHANES survey measures blood pressure in person. From August 2021 to August 2023, 47.7% of U.S. adults had high blood pressure, defined as 130/80 mm Hg or higher or taking blood pressure medicine.⁶

Age	Women	Men
All 18+	44.6%	50.8%
18–39	16.4%	30.0%
40–59	49.0%	55.9%
60+	70.6%	72.7%

• After adjusting for age, 40.1% of women and 48.8% of men had high blood pressure.⁶
• The AHA counts 60.3 million women 20 and older (42.9%) with high blood pressure. Men’s rates are higher through age 74, and women’s are higher from 75 on.³
• High blood pressure affected 59.2% of non-Hispanic Black women, 42.2% of non-Hispanic White women, 39.5% of non-Hispanic Asian women and 37.3% of Hispanic women.³

Women’s rate triples between their 20s and 30s and their 40s and 50s. For everyday steps, see lifestyle changes that lower high blood pressure and natural remedies for high blood pressure.

Blood Pressure Awareness, Treatment and Control

Among adults with high blood pressure in 2021 to 2023, women did better than men on every measure. Still, fewer than 1 in 4 had their numbers below 130/80:⁶

With high BP	Women	Men
Aware of it	63.6%	55.2%
Taking medicine	56.1%	46.7%
Under control	22.8%	18.9%

Younger women are the least likely to know about their high blood pressure. These figures cover women with high blood pressure:⁶

Women’s age	Aware	Treated
18–39	34.6%	21.4%
40–59	58.5%	48.0%
60+	74.5%	70.5%

• Control reached 23.2% of women with high blood pressure at 40 to 59 and 26.4% at 60 and older. The estimate for younger women was too unreliable to report.⁶
• Overall control was 20.7%, compared with 22.2% in 2017 to March 2020. The CDC found no significant change.⁶
• Control among women with high blood pressure was 29.7% for non-Hispanic Asian, 26.1% for non-Hispanic Black, 24.4% for non-Hispanic White and 23.5% for Hispanic women.³
• The USPSTF recommends blood pressure screening for all adults 18 and older, with readings outside the clinic to confirm a diagnosis before treatment starts.¹¹
• It advises yearly checks from age 40, or earlier with higher risk, and every 3 to 5 years for adults 18 to 39 with a normal reading.¹¹

Home readings make a real difference. My printable blood pressure log makes them easy to track and share with your doctor.

Heart Attack Symptoms in Women vs. Men

The VIRGO study interviewed 2,009 women and 976 men ages 18 to 55 who were hospitalized for a heart attack at 103 U.S. hospitals. Chest pain was the main symptom for both sexes, but women had more going on:⁷

Heart attack	Women	Men
Chest pain	87.0%	89.5%
3+ other symptoms	61.9%	54.8%
Blamed stress	20.9%	11.8%
Sought care before	29.5%	22.1%
Told not heart	53%	37%

• Other symptoms included things like upper stomach discomfort and palpitations. Blamed stress means patients thought their symptoms were stress or anxiety.⁷
• Sought care before means getting medical care for similar symptoms before the hospital stay. Told not heart means that provider didn’t think the symptoms were heart-related.⁷

A much larger national registry of 1,143,513 heart attack patients from 1994 to 2006 found that 42.0% of women arrived at the hospital without chest pain or discomfort, compared with 30.7% of men.⁸

Women in that registry were older on average (73.9 vs. 66.5 years). Their in-hospital death rate was 14.6%, compared with 10.3% for men. The gap in both was largest among younger women.⁸

See the full list of warning signs in heart disease symptoms in women and heart disease in seniors.

Stroke in Women

Stroke caused 91,719 deaths among U.S. women in 2023, or 56.4% of all stroke deaths. About 4.3 million women 20 and older (2.6%) have had a stroke, compared with 4.7 million men (3.3%).³

• Past stroke was most common among non-Hispanic Black women (4.7%), followed by Hispanic (3.8%), non-Hispanic White (2.1%) and non-Hispanic Asian women (0.7%).³
• The age-adjusted stroke death rate was 38.1 per 100,000 women and 39.3 per 100,000 men.³
• In the Framingham Study, the lifetime stroke risk from age 55 was about 1 in 5 for women and 1 in 6 for men. Women’s higher risk came from living longer.⁹
• People with normal blood pressure (below 120/80) had about half the lifetime stroke risk of those with 140/90 or higher.⁹

High Blood Pressure in Pregnancy

High blood pressure in pregnancy is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death in the U.S. A CDC study of delivery hospital stays found it in 13.3% of stays in 2017 and 15.9% in 2019.¹⁰

2017–2019	Rate
All deliveries	14.6%
Ages 35–44	18.0%
Ages 45–55	31.0%
Black women	20.9%

• That’s about 1 in 7 delivery hospital stays. Most of the rise came from high blood pressure that started in pregnancy, which went from 10.8% to 13.0%.¹⁰
• Among deaths during a delivery hospital stay, 31.6% had high blood pressure in pregnancy documented.¹⁰
• Women who had high blood pressure in pregnancy have twice the risk of heart disease later in life, according to the CDC.¹

Menopause and Heart Risk

Midlife is when the numbers shift. High blood pressure goes from 16.4% of women 18 to 39 to 49.0% of women 40 to 59.⁶ Age-group data like this can’t show how much is due to menopause and how much to aging.

Cholesterol and body fat changes across the menopause transition have their own studies. You’ll find them, with sources, in my menopause statistics.

Weight, Sleep, Stress and Your Heart

Several of the biggest heart risk factors are common in women. These AHA figures cover adults 20 and older from 2021 to 2023, except smoking (2021):³

Risk factor	Women	Men
Obesity	41.4%	39.3%
Cholesterol 200+	37.1%	35.0%
Smoking	10.1%	13.1%

• Obesity rates are age-adjusted. Cholesterol 200+ means total cholesterol of 200 mg/dL or higher.³
• About 14.5 million women (10.0%) have diagnosed diabetes, and 42.4 million (31.7%) have prediabetes.³

Weight, sleep and stress each have their own stats page, so I won’t repeat those figures here. See my weight loss and obesity statistics, women’s sleep statistics and stress and anxiety statistics.

For practical help, read about visceral belly fat, sleep and weight gain and what chronic stress does to your body.

What Helps Lower Blood Pressure

Diet and exercise both have strong trial evidence. These are average drops in systolic/diastolic blood pressure compared with control groups:

Approach	Evidence	Drop (mm Hg)
DASH diet	459 adults 12	5.5/3.0
DASH + low salt	412 adults 13	8.9/4.5
Isometric exercise	270 trials 14	8.24/4.00

• The DASH diet is rich in fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy and lower in saturated and total fat. In people with high blood pressure, it lowered readings by 11.4/5.5 mm Hg in 8 weeks.¹²
• DASH plus low sodium, compared with a typical higher-sodium diet, lowered systolic pressure by 11.5 mm Hg in people with high blood pressure and 7.1 mm Hg in those without.¹³

Every type of exercise helped in a 2023 review of 270 trials with 15,827 people. Isometric exercise, where you hold a position such as a wall sit or plank, ranked first:¹⁴

Exercise	Systolic	Diastolic
Isometric	−8.24	−4.00
Combined	−6.04	−2.54
Resistance	−4.55	−3.04
Aerobic	−4.49	−2.53
HIIT	−4.08	−2.50

Combined means aerobic plus resistance training. The wall sit was the single most effective exercise for systolic pressure, and running for diastolic. All figures are in mm Hg.¹⁴

Get started with strength training after menopause and walking for weight loss, or join my free 5-day heart-healthy habits challenge. For more data, see my women’s exercise statistics and women’s nutrition statistics.

What These Numbers Mean for You

Here’s my take as a coach: know your numbers. About 1 in 3 women with high blood pressure don’t know they have it, and in your 20s and 30s it’s closer to 2 in 3.

Check your blood pressure at home a few times a week and write it down. Take the log to your doctor so the two of you can see the real pattern, not one rushed reading.

Then build the habits with the best evidence. Eat more fruits, vegetables and beans, cut back on salty packaged foods, and move most days. Add a few wall sits or planks. They take minutes and need no equipment.

Learn the symptoms too. Heart attacks in women often come with extra symptoms on top of chest discomfort. If something feels wrong, get checked, and don’t let anyone, including you, write it off as stress.

More stats pages: menopause, weight loss, sleep, stress and anxiety, exercise, nutrition and osteoporosis.

How to Cite These Statistics

Sources

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Women and Heart Disease. Heart Disease, CDC.
2. Xu JQ, Murphy SL, Kochanek KD, Arias E. Mortality in the United States, 2024. NCHS Data Brief No. 548, January 2026.
3. American Heart Association. 2026 Heart Disease & Stroke Statistics Update Fact Sheet: Females & Cardiovascular Diseases in the United States. 2026.
4. Palaniappan LP, Allen NB, Almarzooq ZI, et al. 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics: A Report of US and Global Data From the American Heart Association. Circulation, 2026;153(9):e275–e906.
5. Cushman M, Shay CM, Howard VJ, et al. Ten-Year Differences in Women’s Awareness Related to Coronary Heart Disease: Results of the 2019 American Heart Association National Survey. Circulation, 2021;143(7):e239–e248.
6. Fryar CD, Kit B, Carroll MD, Afful J. Hypertension Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control Among Adults Age 18 and Older: United States, August 2021–August 2023. NCHS Data Brief No. 511, October 2024.
7. Lichtman JH, Leifheit EC, Safdar B, et al. Sex Differences in the Presentation and Perception of Symptoms Among Young Patients With Myocardial Infarction: Evidence From the VIRGO Study. Circulation, 2018;137(8):781–790.
8. Canto JG, Rogers WJ, Goldberg RJ, et al. Association of Age and Sex With Myocardial Infarction Symptom Presentation and In-Hospital Mortality. JAMA, 2012;307(8):813–822.
9. Seshadri S, Beiser A, Kelly-Hayes M, et al. The Lifetime Risk of Stroke: Estimates From the Framingham Study. Stroke, 2006;37(2):345–350.
10. Ford ND, Cox S, Ko JY, et al. Hypertensive Disorders in Pregnancy and Mortality at Delivery Hospitalization — United States, 2017–2019. MMWR, 2022;71(17):585–591.
11. US Preventive Services Task Force. Hypertension in Adults: Screening. Final Recommendation Statement, April 27, 2021.
12. Appel LJ, Moore TJ, Obarzanek E, et al. A Clinical Trial of the Effects of Dietary Patterns on Blood Pressure. New England Journal of Medicine, 1997;336(16):1117–1124.
13. Sacks FM, Svetkey LP, Vollmer WM, et al. Effects on Blood Pressure of Reduced Dietary Sodium and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Diet. New England Journal of Medicine, 2001;344(1):3–10.
14. Edwards JJ, Deenmamode AHP, Griffiths M, et al. Exercise Training and Resting Blood Pressure: A Large-Scale Pairwise and Network Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2023;57(20):1317–1326.

Frequently Asked Questions

This page summarizes published research and government data for education only. It isn’t medical advice. Talk with your doctor before starting, stopping or changing any blood pressure or heart medication, supplement or exercise program, especially if you’re pregnant or have a heart condition.

Call 911 for chest pain, shortness of breath or stroke signs, such as sudden face drooping, arm weakness or trouble speaking. If you feel hopeless or think about harming yourself, call or text 988. This page is not a substitute for personal care from a qualified professional.