Insights from a New Data Collection Effort into Social Determinants of Cardiovascular Health among Young Adults: Do Neighborhoods Matter?

Noreen Goldman, Princeton University
Boriana Pratt, Princeton University
Heeju Sohn, Emory University
Stephanie Enkel, The Kids Research Institute and University of Western Australia
Norrina Bai Allen, Northwestern University
Hongyan Ning, Northwestern University
Donald Lloyd-Jones, Boston University
Daniel A. Notterman, Princeton University

We explore the socioeconomic and environmental determinants of cardiovascular health among young adults, considering characteristics of the young adults, their parents, and the communities in which they resided during childhood. Our primary objective is to examine the associations between characteristics of the young adults’ communities during childhood and their cardiovascular health in early adulthood. Young adult cardiovascular health (CVH) is assessed by a set of eight risk factors encompassing both health-related behaviors and clinical metrics. We analyze a new data collection effort fielded during 2021-2023: The Cardiovascular Health Among Young Adults (FF-CHAYA) study, which is designed to examine the social determinants of cardiovascular health and subclinical cardiovascular disease among young adults. Participants were subsampled from a longitudinal survey of about 5000 births in large cities in the US that has conducted seven waves of interviews since 1998-2000. A total of 1421 young adults, average age 23, participated in 33 “pop-up” clinics across the US. We use latent class analysis (LCA) based on a rich set of variables at the level of the census tract or county to uncover four profiles of geographic areas of childhood residence. We find significant relationships between young adult CVH and their level of schooling, their racial/ethnic identity, the socioeconomic characteristics of their parental households, and their neighborhood environments. At this early stage of adulthood, these associations are driven largely by health-related behaviors, particularly physical activity and diet, but associations with clinical metrics of cardiovascular risk are likely to appear in the coming years and decades.

Keywords: Health and Morbidity, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Longitudinal studies , Biodemography and genetics

See paper.

  Presented in Session 5. Child, Adolescent, and Young Adult Health