Educational disparities in joint pain within and across US states: do macro sociopolitical contexts matter?

Despite growing recognition of the importance of social, economic, and political contexts for population health and health inequalities, research on pain disparities relies heavily on individual-level data, while neglecting overarching macrolevel factors such as state-level policies and characteristics. Focusing on moderate or severe arthritis-attributable joint pain—a common form of pain that considerably harms individuals' quality of life—we (1) compared joint pain prevalence across US states; (2) estimated educational disparities in joint pain across states; and (3) assessed whether state sociopolitical contexts help explain these 2 forms of cross-state variation. We linked individual-level data on 407,938 adults (ages 25-80 years) from the 2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System with state-level data on 6 measures (eg, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP], Earned Income Tax Credit, Gini index, and social cohesion index). We conducted multilevel logistic regressions to identify predictors of joint pain and inequalities therein. Prevalence of joint pain varies strikingly across US states: the age-adjusted prevalence ranges from 6.9% in Minnesota to 23.1% in West Virginia. Educational gradients in joint pain exist in all states but vary substantially in magnitude, primarily due to variation in pain prevalence among the least educated. At all education levels, residents of states with greater educational disparities in pain are at a substantially higher risk of pain than peers in states with lower educational disparities. More generous SNAP programs (odds ratio [OR] = 0.925; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.963-0.957) and higher social cohesion (OR = 0.819; 95% CI: 0.748-0.896) predict lower overall pain prevalence, and state-level Gini predicts higher pain disparities by education.