AHRQ Social Determinants of Health Updated Database

AHRQ's database on Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) was created under a project funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Trust Fund. The purpose of this project is to create easy to use, easily linkable SDOH-focused data to use in PCOR research, inform approaches to address emerging health issues, and ultimately contribute to improved health outcomes.The database was developed to make it easier to find a range of well documented, readily linkable SDOH variables across domains without having to access multiple source files, facilitating SDOH research and analysis.Variables in the files correspond to five key SDOH domains: social context (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, veteran status), economic context (e.g., income, unemployment rate), education, physical infrastructure (e.g, housing, crime, transportation), and healthcare context (e.g., health insurance). The files can be linked to other data by geography (county, ZIP Code, and census tract). The database includes data files and codebooks by year at three levels of geography, as well as a documentation file.The data contained in the SDOH database are drawn from multiple sources and variables may have differing availability, patterns of missing, and methodological considerations across sources, geographies, and years. Users should refer to the data source documentation and codebooks, as well as the original data sources, to help identify these patterns