The Importance of Understanding Neighborhood Environments in Neurology Care

Compared with US adults without epilepsy, adults with epilepsy are more likely to report an inability to afford prescription medicine and specialty care and delayed care because of transportation barriers or were in families having problems paying medical bills.(1) Although social needs (e.g., public transportation and medication assistance programs) are experienced at the individual level, they may reflect community-level resources that, when present, foster health and, when absent, thwart it. Social determinants of health (SDOH) include the social, economic, institutional, and environmental factors that affect health outcomes.(2,3) Although substantial research has documented disparities in individual-level social needs in people with epilepsy, scant research exists examining associations between community-level SDOH and epilepsy outcomes.(3-5)