Abstract Objective Social determinants of Health (SDoH) play a major role in neuropsychological status. One comprehensive SDoH variable that has shown to predict neuropsychological status is area deprivation index (ADI). Specifically, this is a composite score that reflects the degree of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage (Kind et al., 2018). Prior studies show higher ADI scores indicate worse neuropsychological status (Aneshensel, 2014; Evans, 2003; Shonkoff et al., 2012). We hypothesize that ADI scores will negatively predict neuropsychological performance when demographic clinical diagnoses variables are controlled. Method This clinical sample has 103 adults (M Age= 47.13) who completed a neuropsychological examination between September 2016 and December 2019 at an outpatient clinic. ADI score (17 SES indicators) was calculated based on address at time of exam and transformed into a quintile score. Raw test scores were converted to z-scores and used to create cognitive domain index scores and a global cognitive function score. Regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized interaction. Results A linear regression was conducted to assess if ADI significantly predicted global cognitive function above age, gender, race, ethnicity, and education. The demographic model was significant (R2 = .182, p= .001). The addition of ADI slightly increased explained variance (ΔR2 = .020), but it was not statistically significant (p= .122). Conclusion Though not strong enough for statistical significance in this sample, ADI does show a trend with global cognitive functioning in the expected direction. Future studies should repeat this analysis with a larger sample size to determine if the trend was not significant due to inadequate power.
Brettler et al. (Fri,) studied this question.