Integrating Social Determinants of Health With Treatment and Prevention: A New Tool to Assess Local Area Deprivation

We assessed the appropriate geographic scale to apply an area deprivation index (ADI), which reflects a geographic area’s level of socioeconomic deprivation and is associated with health outcomes, to identify and screen patients for social determinants of health. We estimated the relative strength of the association between the ADI at various geographic levels and a range of hospitalization rates by using age-adjusted odds ratios in an 8-county region of New York State. The 10-km local ADI estimates had the strongest associations with all hospitalization rates (higher odds ratios) followed by estimates at 20 km, 30 km, and the regional scale. A locally sensitive ADI is an ideal measure to identify and screen for the health care and social services needs and to advance the integration of social determinants of health with clinical treatment and disease prevention.