Find Neighborhoods Facing Health Disadvantages with the Area Deprivation Index

The impact of socioeconomic factors such as income, wealth, and housing quality on health outcomes has become impossible to ignore during the global pandemic. These health inequities have been apparent to public health researchers for decades, however, and don’t show signs of dissipating. To help identify neighborhoods that are most socioeconomically disadvantaged, we’ve added a new dataset to PolicyMap to help researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to guide resources and outreach efforts to the places that could need more help. This information is provided by researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH) Center for Health Disparities Research, who have published the Area Deprivation Index to summarize the social determinants of health in a precise geographic area—a neighborhood– noting socioeconomic conditions that can contribute to poor health outcomes.

About the Index

The Area Deprivation Index ranks neighborhoods on the basis of socioeconomic disadvantage in the areas of income, education, employment, and housing quality. Areas with greater disadvantage are ranked higher, and they correlate with worse health outcomes in measures such as life expectancy.

Locating Disadvantaged Neighborhoods

The map of Detroit below shows that much of the City of Detroit ranks Very High on the Area Deprivation Index.

Several factors contribute to this very high rank, including poverty, shown in the map below.

Research has shown that the Area Deprivation Index correlates strongly with overall health. The map below, for example, shows that areas that were ranked very high according to the ADI have lower average life expectancy than surrounding areas.

A recent study showed that areas with higher ADI ranks also have higher rates of rehospitalization for chronic conditions such as COPD or heart failure among Medicare beneficiaries. This study found that patients living in areas with higher ADI rankings were less likely to be released from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility for recovery. This suggests that areas with higher ADI rankings could benefit from greater accessibility of skilled nursing facilities. These same neighborhoods lie within a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area, as defined by the Health Resources and Services Administration and shown in the map below.

About the ADI Data

The Area Deprivation Index was originally developed by researchers at HRSA in the 1980’s, and for the last 15 years has been updated, geographically refined and maintained by researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH) Center for Health Disparities Research. The index combines several indicators from the American Community Survey 5-year estimates (2011-2015 and 2016-2020). These indicators include measures of educational attainment, low income and poverty, and housing problems. The indicators were then weighted according to the results of a statistical analysis and combined into a single score. Raw scores were transformed into percentiles nationally, and deciles for each state. PolicyMap categorized the rank scores into descriptive values for ease of use.

For a detailed explanation of the ADI calculation, go to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4251560/

Note: The ADI project was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number RF1AG057784 (PI: Kind), the National Institute On Minority Health And Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01MD010243 (PI: Kind); the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH) Center for Health Disparities Research and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Aware Number R01AG070883 (PI: Kind, Bendlin).

When sourcing the ADI from PolicyMap, please cite as follows:

Kind AJH, Buckingham W. Making Neighborhood Disadvantage Metrics Accessible: The Neighborhood Atlas. New England Journal of Medicine, 2018. 378: 2456-2458. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1802313. PMCID: PMC6051533 via www.policymap.com.

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University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Center for Health Disparities Research (CHDR). {specify year} Area Deprivation Index {specify version}. Downloaded from https://www.policymap.com/ {date}