Examining the effects of spatial context and social determinants of health on teen birth rates

Keywords: MGWR, social determinants of health, teen birth rate, health disparities
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 23

Abstract

Teen birth rates in the U.S. continue to fall year-over-year. Despite overall reductions, however, geographic disparities remain. Research suggests that social determinants of health (SDOH), which include the “conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age” (Marmot et al., 2008), are a key driver of this spatial variation. Recently, Fuller et al. (2016) hypothesized that eliminating spatial disparities in teen birth rates will require reducing variation in SDOH across communities. To explore this hypothesis further, this research uses a local regression technique, multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR), to examine the spatially varying effects of SDOH on teen birth rates and quantifies the relative effects of location, independent of SDOH, on rates of teen births. Specifically, this research examines two novel questions: 1) would disparities in teen birth rates remain if all counties had identical SDOH, and 2) what would the spatial distribution of teen birth rates be if geographic context played no role in moderating teen behavior? Preliminary findings indicate that even if all counties had identical compositions with respect to SDOH, strong geographic disparities in teen birth rates would persist. Additionally, local parameter estimates show that the relationships between several components of SDOH and teen birth rates vary over space in both direction and magnitude, suggesting that traditional global regression techniques commonly used to examine these associations likely obscure meaningful contextual differences. Policy-relevant insights for addressing disparities in county-level teen birth rates in the U.S. are also explored.