Abstract

Current medical intervention strategies to reduce health disparities often do not take social determinants of health (SDOH) into consideration and tend to be disease-specific. Moreover, minority low-income youth may be disproportionally affected by SDOH status resulting in low access to and utilization of reproductive and primary care. Based on publicly available data, the aggregate status of various SDOHs measures in five inner city neighborhoods where specific adolescent clinics were collected. Aggregate data of appointment compliance for each of the seven clinics in an adolescent and young adult clinic system was also calculated. The purpose of this study was to conduct a preliminary descriptive analysis of the neighborhood-level SDOH status, appointment compliance among patients on a clinic-level and identify potential relationships between the two.

Keywords

social determinants of health, inner city youth, family planning, appointments, risk reduction