Journal article
Neighborhood Disparities in Influenza and Influenza like Illness Hospitalization During Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza
Open forum infectious diseases, v 12(8), ofaf468
05 Aug 2025
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Background
Between 2010 and 2024, 120 000–710 000 people were hospitalized for influenza in the United States each year. In the current century there has been one influenza pandemic so far, causing widespread infection, hospitalization, and deaths. While prior research has examined neighborhood and individual racial and socioeconomic disparities in influenza outcomes during seasonal or pandemic influenza, there is limited understanding of whether the associations between neighborhood social determinants and influenza outcomes differ between seasonal and pandemic influenza.
Methods
Using Health Care Utilization Project hospitalization data from New York State from 2009–2013, covering the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and seasonal influenza in the following years, we computed the relative index of inequality (RII) in influenza hospitalization rates associated with neighborhood social and economic factors.
Results
All neighborhood factors showed significant associations with hospitalization, although the magnitude of the disparities differed by neighborhood factor, and disparities were generally slightly wider in pandemic influenza periods, although differences between periods were small. The widest hospitalization rate disparity for pandemic and seasonal influenza periods was for median household income (pandemic RII, 2.39 [95% confidence interval, 2.16–2.63]; seasonal RII, 2.34 [2.10–2.60]); the factor with the largest difference between pandemic and seasonal periods was poverty (pandemic and seasonal RIIs, 2.11 and 1.84, respectively).
Conclusions
Our findings demonstrate the persistence of neighborhood inequities in influenza hospitalizations in both pandemic and seasonal periods and suggest the importance of investing in structural conditions to address health inequities.
Metrics
2 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Neighborhood Disparities in Influenza and Influenza like Illness Hospitalization During Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza
- Creators
- Alina Schnake-Mahl (Corresponding Author) - Drexel UniversityHeather Rollins - Drexel UniversityNeal D Goldstein - Drexel UniversityUsama Bilal - Drexel UniversityAna V Diez Roux - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Open forum infectious diseases, v 12(8), ofaf468
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Number of pages
- 10
- Grant note
This work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (grant K01AI168579-03 to A. S. M.).
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Urban Health Collaborative; Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Health Management and Policy
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:001556158200001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-105014470746
- Other Identifier
- 991022084628304721
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Immunology
- Infectious Diseases
- Microbiology