The Association between Neighborhood Disorder and Health: Exploring the Moderating Role of Genotype and Marriage

Man-Kit Lei,Ronald L Simons

doi:10.3390/ijerph18030898

Abstract

The present study extends prior research on the link between neighborhood disorder and health by testing an integrated model that combines various social and biological factors. Hypotheses were tested using a sample of 325 African American women from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS). As expected, inflammatory burden was the biophysiological mechanism that mediated much of the association between neighborhood physical disorder and perceived physical health. This finding provided additional support for the view that global self-ratings of health are powerful predictors of morbidity because, in large measure, they are indicators of chronic, systemic inflammation. Further, both genetic variation and marital status served to moderate the association between neighborhood disorder and health. Finally, being married largely eliminated the probability that neighborhood disorder would combine with genetic vulnerability to increase inflammatory burden and perceived illness. Overall, the findings demonstrate the value of constructing integrated models that specify various biophysiological mechanisms that link social conditions to physical health.

Highlights

The first set of hypotheses addresses the relationships among neighborhood disorder, inflammatory burden, and self-rated physical health
Neighborhood disorder will be associated with both inflammatory burden and self-rated health (Pathways a and b)
15% of the respondents lived in neighborhoods with visible signs of disorder

Summary

Introduction

Res. Public Health 2021, 18, Over the past two decades, there has been increasing interest in how social conditions influence health and disease [1,2,3,4,5]. Recent research indicates that lower socioeconomic status (SES) and exposure to childhood adversity are associated with a higher prevalence of chronic illnesses, including diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and immune system dysregulation [6,7,8,9,10]. In addition to individual SES, numerous studies have provided evidence suggesting that the neighborhoods where people live are fundamental contexts for understanding physical health [11,12,13,14,15]. The present study is concerned with increasing our understanding of how neighborhood disorder combines with various social and biological processes to foster physical illness. We extend prior research on this issue in several respects

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Discussion

Conclusion