health
High blood pressure (adults)
Why this matters
High blood pressure in adults measures the share of adults ever told by a health professional that they have high blood pressure, or hypertension, a leading and often silent risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and kidney disease. On this platform these are modeled estimates that blend survey and population data, so they are best read as the level in each year, not as year-to-year change (the CDC does not support using them as a trend).
Because it usually has no symptoms, high blood pressure is frequently undiagnosed or untreated, especially where regular checkups are hard to reach. It is also highly manageable with consistent care, medication, and diet.
High rates often track other community conditions: limited access to care, healthy food, and safe places to be active. In Mecklenburg County, that gradient follows the crescent/wedge pattern mapped by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and the Community Health Assessment.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- CDC PLACES — Health Outcomes measure definitions cdc.gov
Official definition of the high-blood-pressure measure and how it is estimated.
- CDC — About PLACES cdc.gov
Explains the model-based small-area method behind the local estimates.
- Mecklenburg Community Health Assessment health.mecknc.gov
Local public-health data and neighborhood health disparities for Mecklenburg County.
- Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer ui.charlotte.edu
Mecklenburg County’s neighborhood indicator system — 462 Neighborhood Profile Areas (a City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and UNC Charlotte Urban Institute partnership).
About the data
Model-based small-area estimates from the CDC PLACES project (2017–2023), which uses BRFSS survey data and multilevel regression & poststratification to estimate adult prevalence for every Census tract. Each estimate has a confidence interval; values with high uncertainty are flagged.
Source: CDC PLACES (model-based small-area estimates).