Social Determinants of Health for Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic Syndrome Among Patients With Diabetes

Cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome is a recently introduced term that is a complex disease consisting of cardiovascular disease, renal disease, obesity, and diabetes. The association of social determinants of health (SDOH) with CKM syndrome is not fully known.

We aimed to assess SDOH affecting CKM syndrome among adult patients with diabetes at follow-up at a tertiary hospital in Ethiopia.

A cross-sectional hospital-based study was used. Data were collected using a Kobo toolbox and entered into SPSS version 29 for further analysis.

A total of 422 adult patients with diabetes were included in this study. The mean ± SD age of the patients was 54.14 ± 13.74 years. Fifty-two percent of the patients were male. In this study, 52.4% had cardiovascular kidney metabolic syndrome. Male patients (AOR: 1.73; 95% CI, 1.01-2.94), lost to follow-up for more than a year due to lack of money (AOR: 2.69; 95% CI, 1.01-7.22), missed an appointment due to lack of transportation in the past 1 year (AOR: 2.98; 95% CI, 1.21-7.33), were patients with disability (AOR: 1.97; 95% CI, 1.12-3.48), had hypertension (AOR: 3.12; 95% CI, 1.85-5.28), had obesity (AOR: 2.27, 95% CI, 1.17, 4.40), and were in retirement (AOR: 2.12; 95% CI, 1.04-4.30) these being more significantly associated with CKM syndrome.

More than half of patients had CKM syndrome. More attention should be given to SDOH, including male sex, financial constraints, transportation issues, disability, and retirement.