When It Comes to Health, Your Zip Code May Matter

A study published in Annals of Internal Medicine analyzed data from nearly 6.4 million Medicare beneficiaries who had participated in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, reports MedPage Today . The researchers concentrated on more than 700 U.S. "commuting zones," or clusters of counties developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that detail economic and social activity. The researchers found older adults with low incomes are healthier if they live in affluent communities. "Areas with poor health in the low-income, older adult population tend to have a high prevalence of most chronic conditions," the authors noted. Overall prevalence ranged from 72.2 per 100 adults for hypertension to 0.6 per 100 for post-traumatic stress disorder, while the five most prevalent chronic conditions were hyperlipidemia, anemia, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, ischemic heart disease, and diabetes. The researchers deemed social and other community-related factors to more likely be the cause of these findings rather than access to healthcare services. "Many conditions that we examined are chronic, lifelong diseases related to daily health investments throughout someone's life, so it is very unlikely that differences can be attributed to differential availability or access to formal care," said Stanford University Professor Maria Polyakova. The study concluded that healthier areas of the country are healthier across all dimensions.