A new study by LDI Senior Fellow Sameed Khatana and colleagues leverages state-level differences in policies related to SNAP to uncover a link between SNAP access and heart disease mortality.

This study is the first to identify an association between policies that improve access to SNAP and fewer heart deaths, said Khatana, an Assistant Professor of Cardiology at the Perelman School of Medicine. Previous work has linked more generous SNAP benefits to lower rates of diabetes, better medication adherence, and fewer hospitalizations.

Analyzing data from over 3,100 U.S. counties between 2006 and 2019, Khatana and colleagues tracked more than 11 million heart deaths at the county level.

Had the most generous SNAP policies been implemented in all states, the researchers estimated an average of 15,000 fewer cardiovascular deaths per year between 2006 and 2019. Focusing on 2019, they estimated that approximately 46,000 fewer cardiovascular deaths would have occurred if all states had expanded access to SNAP.

The study provides some of the strongest evidence to date that reducing administrative barriers to food assistance may improve population-level heart health.

We asked Khatana what inspired this research and what its implications are.

What motivated you to examine the link between SNAP benefits and cardiovascular mortality?

Khatana: Individuals experiencing food insecurity have a high burden of cardiovascular risk factors and disease. SNAP is the largest government-funded program addressing food insecurity in the United States. SNAP provided benefits to 41.7 million people, on average, per month in 2024, at a cost of almost $100 billion. We were interested in determining whether policies that make it more or less easy for individuals to enroll in SNAP, and that vary between states, have a measurable impact on cardiovascular health. In prior work we showed that such policies are associated with diabetes prevalence. In this analysis, we expanded on the prior study to examine how such policies influence county-level cardiovascular mortality across the US.

What excited you most about studying SNAP?

Khatana: While there is a lot of evidence tying food insecurity to adverse health, whether SNAP can, in turn, improve health, particularly mortality, is less well known. This work, therefore, fills an important gap in the literature regarding SNAP in general, and specific SNAP-related state policies in particular, and their association with an important health outcome.

What is your most important finding regarding the link between cardiovascular deaths and easier access to SNAP benefits?

Khatana: The primary finding was that on an index of state SNAP policies with higher values indicating lower barriers to SNAP enrollment and participation, a higher value was associated with fewer cardiovascular deaths. To contextualize this, we estimate what the number of deaths would be if all states adopted the most generous policies, and we estimated that over our study period of 2006-2019, an estimated 15,000 fewer adult cardiovascular deaths would have occurred compared with the observed trajectory of SNAP generosity. Of the different policies we analyzed, adoption of Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility, which can expand SNAP eligibility and reduce administrative burden, had the greatest influence on the overall result.

What do these findings help us understand about SNAP participation?

Khatana: This analysis suggests that policies that reduce barriers and increase SNAP participation are associated with lower cardiovascular mortality.

Where is your research related to health and SNAP going?

Khatana: We are examining both individual-level, rather than area-level health outcomes, and are also trying to understand the mechanism for the association between SNAP and health such as medication adherence.

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The study, “State Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Policies and Cardiovascular Mortality” was published in JAMA Network Open on July 20, 2026 by Sriya Potluri, Nicholas Illenberger, and Sameed Ahmed M. Khatana.

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