Today, UCLA launches the region’s first heart health program tailored for South Asians, who face up to four times the risk of cardiovascular disease compared with the general population.

It’s a staggering statistic that hits especially hard in Southern California, home to one of the largest South Asian communities in the United States.

Dr. Ravi Dave, the interventional cardiologist leading the UCLA initiative, says the elevated health risks are flying under the radar.

“And that came as a surprise, because the South Asian community is fairly educated,” Dave said. “They’re successful. But the awareness was not there.”

Driving factors

For decades, physicians have observed that people of South Asian descent — those with roots in countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal — tend to suffer from heart disease at significantly younger ages and with more severe complications.

“When I do angiograms on South Asian patients, their arteries are often diffusely blocked and much smaller in size,” Dave said. “They age prematurely in terms of heart health—and they’re often poor candidates for interventions like stents or bypass surgery.”

Research shows that South Asians represent about a quarter of the world’s population but account for more than half of heart disease cases.

Multiple factors are at play: diets packed with fried foods and carbohydrates and sedentary lifestyles.

‘The Thrifty Gene’?

And then there’s the burden of genetics. Dave subscribes to the debated hypothesis around “the Thrifty Gene.” It’s built on the idea that ancestors passed down their ability to retain fat to survive food shortages set off by natural disasters and — Dave says — exacerbated during British colonial rule. That’s when much of the grain grown in South Asia was exported to Britain.

Dave says it doesn’t matter if the worst famines took place more than a century ago.

“Even if you have not had exposure to malnutrition or a famine for three or four generations, you’re still carrying it, and that’s your default gene,” Dave said.

Dave says as a result of this inherited trait, people of South Asian descent tend to have normal BMI readings that may mask dangerous amounts of belly fat that’s associated with cardiovascular risk. So assessments would include a measurement of the waist.

Dave said he felt urgency to help the South Asian community course-correct.

“There is a generation in their 20s and 30s that, if left unchecked, are going to continue to have the same outcome as their parents, and that’s where I think we need to make a big difference,” Dave said.

Program details

Over the next six months, the UCLA program will conduct outreach at 10 sites across the region, including Hindu and Buddhist temples, mosques, churches and community centers.

Visitors can get free blood pressure screenings and blood tests at a mobile health unit provided by UCLA.

UCLA will also provide free consultations — in-person or online — and the program even welcomes patients seeking second opinions.

“The whole purpose of this is not to increase the patient volume at UCLA, but to help the community,” Dave said. “So laboratory work that’s done somewhere else we would be willing to look at it and help the patient.”