Residential Mobility Impacts SDOH in Spinal Cord Injury Patients

Through data analytics, Spinal Cord Injury Model System researchers identified residential mobility as a social determinant of health in individuals with spinal cord injuries.

The study’s objective was to investigate residential mobility among community-living adults with spinal cord injuries. Researchers then examined the individual, health, and neighborhood factors associated with the apparent trend in relocation.

Researchers collected a national sample of adults with spinal cord injuries, making it the first national investigation of residential mobility. The article showed that one in four people moved after spinal cord injury over a five-year period. Researchers distinguished between non-movers, local movers, and long-distance movers.

The data showed that moving was most common among young adults, people from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds, and people from low-income households. The article was published online by the Archive of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

In the study, researchers identified residential mobility patterns in individuals with spinal cord injury by using retrospective data analytics from the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center. The data was collected between 2006 and 2018 and was linked to neighborhood characteristics from the American Community Survey.

The study included 4,599 survey participants who had traumatic spinal cord injuries and used residential geographic identifiers at the census tract level. The participants took part in two waves of follow-up surveys.

According to the data, 55 percent of those that moved relocated to a different census tract in the same county and 45 percent relocated to a different county or state. Additionally, 35 percent of all movers relocated to a high-poverty census tract.

The research team also discovered that high-poverty and racial or ethnic segregation in a participant’s original neighbor predicted an increased risk for individuals with a spinal cord injury to remain or move into a high-poverty neighborhood.

“These results are important because changing residences can be a large undertaking, particularly for a person with a disability due to a lack of accessible housing. Oftentimes that change can be for positive, however our data suggests that many people with SCI are moving to more, not less, disadvantaged circumstances,” lead author and Assistant Director of the Centers for Spinal Cord Injury Research and Outcomes & Assessment Research Dr. Amanda Botticello said in a press release.

“This increases the risk for health disparities and poorer long-term outcomes. We anticipate that our findings will inform policymakers’ considerations of housing, healthcare, and employment initiatives for people with spinal cord injury and other chronic disabilities.”

The Spinal Cord Injury Model System study illustrated that vulnerable populations were more likely to relocate, often to high-poverty neighborhoods. According to the Spinal Cord Injury Model System researchers, the relocation is a social determinant of health factor and can increase health disparities.