A Socioecological Mixture Model of Asthma Prevalence Among Sexual Minority Adults in the United States

PURPOSE: Sexual minority (SM) identity as well as sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors are associated with asthma prevalence. A syndemics framework analyzes disease conditions in a population and the social, economic, and environmental contexts in which they are found. We used a syndemic model of individual-level socioecological factors to identify profiles of asthma prevalence among SM adults. METHODS: Latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted on a subpopulation of SM adults aged 18–59 years from the 2001 to 2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Indicators in the LCA model included current asthma, gender, sexual identity, poverty-income ratio, education, and serum cotinine level. Multinomial logistic regression analyzed the effects of covariates (race/ethnicity, nativity, age, marital status, body mass index, lifetime smoking, and mental health care seeking) on identified profiles. RESULTS: Four classes were identified among our sample of n = 1097 SM adults. Classes 1 and 2 had 19% and 18% conditional probabilities of current asthma, respectively, and were primarily female and bisexual. Classes 3 and 4 had 5% and 2% conditional probabilities of asthma, respectively, and were primarily male and gay. Classes 1 and 3 also had conditional probabilities of high income and educational attainment. Black individuals had higher odds than White individuals of being in Class 1 (odds ratio [OR] = 4.46, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.43–13.93), Class 2 (OR = 21.66, 95% CI = 7.50–62.60), and Class 4 (OR = 7.41, 95% CI = 2.05–26.71), relative to Class 3. CONCLUSION: Findings extend past literature that suggests within-group asthma disparities among SM adults. Informational campaigns on asthma management should target this community to avoid severe disease exacerbations.