Your neighborhood might make your sick, according to a study by Vanderbilt University School of Medicine researchers that was published this January.
The study looked at 27,078 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries without a prior history of heart failure but lived in impoverished neighborhoods in the Southeastern U.S. It found “scant neighborhood resources compound the risk of heart failure above and beyond individual socioeconomic status and traditional cardiovascular risk factors.”
While previous studies have linked heart failure risk to socioeconomic characteristics, such as income and education level, the Vanderbilt study suggests living in deprived communities plays its own role.
Ken Thorpe, chairman of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease and public health professor at Emory University, said the research adds to a body of literature that shows physical environment and social circumstances can influence health.
“There are a number of things that really determine health care outcomes, and certainly health insurance is one of them and access to the health care system is one of them, but there’s really a broader set of social determinants of health that probably are more important,” Thorpe said.