Description
Health disparities have been a concern in the public health world for decades, yet there is no standard methodology for determining health disparities, or for understanding which indicators are best for determining health disparities. Using the 3-Four-50% concept that three behaviors (tobacco use, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition) cause four diseases (cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease, and cardiovascular disease) that lead to 50% of the deaths in the United States, and the social determinants of health concept to guide which indicators to pick, this study attempts to discover the best indicators for measuring health disparities among San Diego County communities. Univariate analysis is used to determine which indicators should be included in the multiple linear regression with the four outcome variables of cancer mortality rate, diabetes mortality rate, respiratory disease mortality rate, and cardiovascular disease mortality rate. Then cluster analysis was performed to identify communities within San Diego County that are similar based on the indicator variables and the outcome variables. Results show that work is still needed to find the best indicators to predict health disparities in San Diego County communities. Although the cluster analysis was not successful in identifying communities that are different from each other, there is still hope that the cluster analysis would be a good tool for analysis of communities within a larger geographic area, such as a county.
