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Methods: We used a US nationally-representative sample of middle-aged adults from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths 1979 and data from the Corruption in America Survey to estimate the associations between state-level illegal (private gains) corruption and legal (political gains) corruption in 2013 and individual-level risks of incident diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and depression between 2014 and 2016.

Results: Medium and higher levels of illegal corruption were associated with odds ratios (ORs) of 1.75 (95% CI 1.06-2.88) for incident diabetes and 1.70 (95% CI 1.15-2.51) for incident hypertension, respectively. Furthermore, a higher level of legal corruption was associated with ORs of 1.84 (95% CI 1.08-3.13) for diabetes and 1.58 (95% CI 1.05-2.38) for hypertension. No consistent associations were observed for obesity or depression.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that higher levels of corruption contribute to increased risks of developing diabetes and hypertension. Investing resources into fighting corruption may be means to reduce the national burden of cardiovascular disease.

Methods: We drew data on cardiovascular disease risk factors from middle-aged Americans in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths 1979 and on hate crimes from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. Employing multivariable logistic regression, we estimated the associations between changes in state/county-level all and group-specific hate crime rates from 2000 to 2006 and incident individual-level diabetes, hypertension, obesity and depressive symptoms from 2008 to 2016. All models controlled for individual-level sociodemographic factors and financial strain, county-level and state-level changes in the total crime rate, the percentage of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic/Latino residents, and median household income, as well as state-level changes in the percentage of residents aged 65 years or older and the unemployment rate.

Results: 1-SD increases in state-level all and race/ethnicity-based hate crime rates were associated with 20% (OR 1.20, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.35) and 15% higher odds (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.31) of incident diabetes, respectively. At the county level, a 1-SD increase in the all hate crime rate was linked to 8% higher odds (OR 1.08, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.16) of obesity, while a 1-SD increase in the race/ethnicity-based hate crime rate was associated with 8% higher odds (OR 1.08, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.15) of obesity and 9% higher odds (OR 1.09, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.17) of hypertension. We found no significant associations for depressive symptoms, and no interactions between race/ethnicity-based hate crime rates and individual-level race/ethnicity.