Overall Outlook on Life and Cardiovascular Health Behaviors among Adolescent and Young Adult Females: A Cross-sectional Study

In a cohort of 331 young women aged 15–24, outlook on life is linked to healthier preventive cardiovascular behaviors, with effect sizes of β=0.18–0.19 and β=0.12.

• Why it matters: Cardiovascular risk factors often begin in adolescence, but how psychological outlook relates to prevention behaviors in young women remains insufficiently studied.
• What they did: Using secondary analysis of the 2017–2018 modified American Heart Association Women’s Health Survey, multivariate regression adjusted for confounding tested associations between outlook and health behaviors.
• The result: More positive outlook is associated with prioritizing health (β=0.18–0.19, 95% CI [0.09, 0.29]; P=0.002) and usually following healthy eating (β=0.12, 95% CI [0.03, 0.23]; P=0.016), but the link may be weaker among young women who identified as black (OR=0.80, 95% CI [0.65, 0.98]; P=0.04).

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