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

This archived SDOH Database (beta version) is available for reference. The most recent version of the SDOH Database replaces the beta version and is available on the main page. To ensure consistency in variable names and construction, analyses should not combine data from the beta version and the updated database.Download DataThe SDOH Data Source Documentation (PDF, 1.5 MB) file contains information for researchers about the structure and contents of the database and descriptions of each data source used to populate the database.The Variable Codebook (XLSX, 494 KB) Excel file provides descriptive statistics for each SDOH variable by year.

Abstract

An integral part of delivering high-quality healthcare is understanding the social determinants of health (SDOH) of patients and of communities in which healthcare is provided. SDOH are defined by the World Health Organization as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age.

SDOH, although experienced by individuals, exist at the community level. Healthcare systems that learn about the communities in which their patients live can adapt their services to meet the communities’ specific needs. This, in turn, can help patients and community members overcome obstacles to achieving and maintaining good health.

Usage

Additional information about SDOH is available on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) SDOH website (https://www.ahrq.gov/sdoh/about.html).

These datasets contain summarizing clusters and dimensions of place-based social determinant of health measures for the United States from AHRQ's Social Determinants of Health Database (https://www.ahrq.gov/sdoh/data-analytics/sdoh-data.html), along with the underlying SDOH data. Summary clusters and dimensions are available for both counties and Zip codes. The measures are taken from the 2019 and 2018 AHRQ SDOH datasets. Underlying SDOH measures are in the domains of social context, economic context, education, physical infrastructure, and healthcare context. The summary dimensions and cluster memberships for counties and Zip codes were generated using principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis techniques to provide simple high-level representations of the SDOH context for counties and Zip codes.

Brand performance data collected from AI search platforms for the query "social determinants of health data sources".