Association Between Social Vulnerability Index and Mortality Following Acute Myocardial Infarction in the US Counties

Social determinants of health (SDOH) play a major role in cardiovascular outcomes. The social vulnerability index (SVI) is a tool designed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to measure a community's vulnerability to respond and recover from disasters. The parameters of SVI can be used to gauge social disparities amongst different US counties and its association with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) related to age- adjusted mortality rate (AAMR) by using the multiple causes of death database from CDC, Prevention's Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiological Research (WONDER 2016-2020) and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). We used segmented regression models to evaluate the association between quintiles of SVI scores and AAMR using STATA. A total of 2908 of 3289 US counties were used in the analysis. The mean AAMR was 89.3 per 100,000 (95% CI: 87.1-91.5) from 2016 to 2020. US counties with higher SVI were associated with higher AMI-related age-adjusted mortality when compared to counties with lower SVI. Counties with the highest SVI and AAMR were in the mid-western and southern states The findings of our study can guide focused care for a uniform upliftment of CV health across the nation by identifying the distribution of socio-economically disadvantaged counties.