• Lucas C Carlson, Jungyeon Kim, Margaret E Samuels-Kalow, Brian J Yun, Dellara F Terry, Jeffrey B Weilburg, and Jarone Lee.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Population Health Management, Partners HealthCare, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: lccarlson@partners.org.
• Am J Emerg Med. 2021 Jun 1; 44: 213-219.

BackgroundNeighborhood stress score (NSS) and area deprivation index (ADI) are two neighborhood-based composite measures used to quantify an individual's socioeconomic risk based on home location. In this analysis, we compare the relationships between an individual's socioeconomic risk, based on each of these measures, and potentially preventable acute care utilization.MethodsUsing emergency department (ED) visit data from two academic medical centers in Boston, Massachusetts, we conducted adjusted Poisson regressions of ADI decile and NSS decile with counts of low acuity ED visits, admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs), and patients with high frequency ED utilization at the census block group (CBG) level within the greater Boston area.ResultsBoth NSS and ADI decile were associated with elevated rates of utilization, although the associated incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for NSS were higher than those for ADI across all three measures. NSS decile was associated with IRRs of 1.11 [95% CI: 1.10-1.12], 1.16 [1.14-1.17], and 1.22 [1.19-1.25] for ACSC admissions, low acuity ED visits, and patients with high frequency ED utilization, respectively; compared with 1.04 [1.04-1.05], 1.11 [1.10-1.11], and 1.10 [1.08-1.12] for ADI decile.ConclusionADI and NSS both represent effective tools to assess the potential impact of geographically-linked socioeconomic drivers of health on potentially preventable acute care utilization. NSS decile was associated with a greater effect size for each measure of utilization suggesting that this may be a stronger predictor, however, additional research is necessary to evaluate these findings in other contexts.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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