Social determinants of health score: does it help identify those at higher cardiovascular risk?

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations, leading to calls to address social determinants of health (SDOH) as a preventive strategy. Our aim is to create a weighed SDOH score and to test the impact of each SDOH factor on the Framingham risk score (FRS) and on individual traditional CVD risk factors.

We conducted a retrospective cohort study.

We included patients seen at a primary care clinic at UHealth/University of Miami Health System who answered a SDOH survey between September 16, 2016, and September 10, 2017. The survey included SDOH domains recommended by the American Heart Association position statement and by the National Academy of Medicine. We selected the FRS as well as all traditional CVD risk factors as our outcome metrics.

We included 2876 patients. The mean (SD) age of our cohort was 53.8 (15.8) years, 61% were female, 9% were Black, 38% were Hispanic, and 87% reported speaking English. The statistically significant β coefficients in the FRS model corresponded to being born outside of the United States, being a racial minority, living alone, having a high social isolation score, and having a low geocoded median household income (P < .01). Increasing quartile of SDOH score was significantly associated with higher systolic blood pressure, FRS, glycated hemoglobin, and smoking pack-years (P < .05). It was also associated with fewer minutes spent exercising weekly (P < .01).

The addition of self-reported SDOH data has a dose effect on CVD risk factors. Future studies should address how to intervene to address social factors.