• Kristi L Allgood, Blair Whittington, Yanmei Xie, Jana L Hirschtick, Annie Ro, Robert C Orellana, and Nancy L Fleischer.
• University of Michigan School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health. 1415 Washington Heights, 2649A, SPH Tower, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; Texas A&M University School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, USA. Electronic address: kallgood@umich.edu.
• Prev Med. 2023 Dec 1; 177: 107719107719.

ObjectiveUnderstanding the relationship between social factors and persistent COVID-19 health outcomes, such as onset of a disability after a SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) infection, is an increasingly important public health issue. The purpose of this paper is to examine associations between social vulnerability and new onset of a mobility disability post-COVID-19 diagnosis.MethodsWe used data from the Michigan COVID-19 Recovery Surveillance Study, a population-based probability survey of adults with PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in Michigan between January 2020-May 2022 (n = 4295). We used the Minority Health Social Vulnerability Index (MHSVI), with high county-level social vulnerability defined at or above the 75th percentile. Mobility disability was defined as new difficulty walking or climbing stairs. We regressed mobility disability on the overall MHSVI, as well as sub-themes of the index (socioeconomic status, household composition/disability, minority and language, housing type, healthcare access, and medical vulnerability), using multivariable logistic regression, adjusting for age, race, sex, education, employment, and income.ResultsLiving in a county with high (vs. low) social vulnerability was associated with 1.38 times higher odds (95% confidence interval [CI]:1.18-1.61) of reporting a new mobility disability after a COVID-19 diagnosis after adjustment. Similar results were observed for the socioeconomic status and household composition/disability sub-themes. In contrast, residents of highly racially diverse counties had lower odds (odds ratio 0.74, 95% CI: 0.61, 0.89) of reporting a new mobility disability compared to low diversity counties.ConclusionsMitigating the effects of social vulnerabilities requires additional resources and attention to support affected individuals.Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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