A novel approach for measuring residential socioeconomic factors associated with cardiovascular and metabolic health

Abstract

Individual-level characteristics, including socioeconomic status, have been associated with poor metabolic and cardiovascular health; however, residential area-level characteristics may also independently contribute to health status. In the current study, we used hierarchical clustering to aggregate 444 US Census block groups in Durham, Orange, and Wake Counties, NC, USA into six homogeneous clusters of similar characteristics based on 12 demographic factors. We assigned 2254 cardiac catheterization patients to these clusters based on residence at first catheterization. After controlling for individual age, sex, smoking status, and race, there were elevated odds of patients being obese (odds ratio (OR) = 1.92, 95% confidence intervals (CI) = 1.39, 2.67), and having diabetes (OR = 2.19, 95% CI = 1.57, 3.04), congestive heart failure (OR = 1.99, 95% CI = 1.39, 2.83), and hypertension (OR = 2.05, 95% CI = 1.38, 3.11) in a cluster that was urban, impoverished, and unemployed, compared with a cluster that was urban with a low percentage of people that were impoverished or unemployed. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of applying hierarchical clustering to an assessment of area-level characteristics and that living in impoverished, urban residential clusters may have an adverse impact on health.

Neighborhood Socioeconomic Environment and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: Associations and Mediation Through Food Environment Pathways in Three Independent Study Samples

“…Measures of the food environment used in this study were based on highly curated data from the RECVD study (22). Although the main analytic approach we used in the present study used relative measures of the food environment, the Network also investigated absolute measures within the VADR cohort in a separate study, and results suggested that repeated sensitivity analyses with the other two samples were not indicated (38). Our choice to use relative availability as the primary food-environment measure for these analyses builds on prior research, including studies in which models with relative measures had better model fit than models with absolute measures (49,50).…”

Development of TracMyAir Smartphone Application for Modeling Exposures to Ambient PM2.5 and Ozone

“…The values for the sensitivity analysis are shown in Table 3 and Table 4. The default values for the various model inputs and the high and low values were set to reasonable values observed in previously reported field studies [9,10,33] and epidemiological studies [11,34] in central NC. The default values for Q fan and CADR were set to the application default values.…”

Environmental Health Literacy as Knowing, Feeling, and Believing: Analyzing Linkages between Race, Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Status and Willingness to Engage in Protective Behaviors against Health Threats

“…Homeownership historically represents higher levels of SES; it is directly associated with wealth accumulation, community building, neighborhood stability, and overall economic well-being [ 20 , 21 ]. In contrast, lower neighborhood-level SES is associated with increased psychosocial stress, fewer environmental amenities, and decreased access to parks, high-speed internet, libraries, and other local infrastructure [ 14 , 22 ]. These resources allow people to address potential health risks, and people without access tend to have poorer health [ 17 ].…”