Social determinants of health: Making the most of the American community survey

Health is impacted by individual behavior, which in turn is associated with socioeconomic status (i.e. income, poverty, education, marital status). Such variables are critically important for evaluating the health among various subgroups of the population. The decennial US Census and the American Community Survey (ACS) are potentially powerful tools in identifying populations with health disparities and the locations in which they reside due to data availability for small geographic areas. Although data are publicly available, many novice users find harnessing the power of ACS data challenging. With the addition of the margin of error (MOE) provided by the US Census Bureau for each ACS variable, the ability to make relatively quick, simple and appropriate comparisons is now possible. With the addition of the MOE, attendees will see how simple statistical tools developed in any spreadsheet program can be employed in the classroom to demystify the data analysis process. This session will demonstrate a number of standard, accessible, and well-understood analytic approaches using publicly available data via the ACS to identify social determinants of health that often predict where health disparities are most likely to occur. In addition attendees will learn the differences between various Census geography, the tradeoffs between 1, 3 and 5 year ACS datasets, selecting appropriate variables related to the social determinants of health, establishing baseline and trend measures and learning how develop spreadsheet tools to help students create visually appealing and appropriate results.