In a study recently published in Lancet Public Health, CHDS faculty Nicolas Menzies and first author Mathilda Regan, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Global Health and Population, used a sequential multiple mediation approach to examine risk factors underlying racial-ethnic disparities in tuberculosis (TB) outcomes in the United States.
Racial-ethnic disparities are rooted in historical and ongoing racism and discrimination, which leads to inequitable exposure to risk factors for adverse TB outcomes. Using TB surveillance and American Community Survey data, the researchers examined the extent to which individual and neighborhood level risk factors mediated the association between race-ethnicity and TB treatment incompletion.
Their findings suggest that exposure to neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage, economic and racial polarization, and the presence of comorbidities (HIV and end-stage renal disease), play important roles in explaining disparities in TB treatment incompletion for U.S.-born Black and Hispanic persons relative to White persons. These findings underscore the importance of mitigating the structural and environmental factors that lead to disparities in the prevalence of comorbidities, as well as improving access to and quality of care for persons with comorbid TB.
Learn more: Read the article, Risk Factors Underlying Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment Outcomes, 2011–19: A Multiple Mediation Analysis of National Surveillance Data
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