ArticleThe Lancet. Public health2024
Identification of factors associated with opioid-related and hepatitis C virus-related hospitalisations at the ZIP code area level in the USA: an ecological and modelling study.
Article in The Lancet. Public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Machine learning and probabilistic approaches for forecasting infectious disease transmission and cases.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2026Article
- Optimizing mobile health clinic placement via geospatial modeling.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- Article
- A Global Perspective on Incidence and Regional Trends of Opioid Use Disorders From 1990 to 2021.Psychiatry investigation · 2025Article
- Article
- A Flexible Framework for Local-Level Estimation of the Effective Reproductive Number in Geographic Regions with Sparse Data.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Predicting mobile health clinic utilization for COVID-19 vaccination in South Carolina: A statistical framework for strategic resource allocation.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Mobile health clinics for distribution of vaccinations to underserved communities during health emergencies: A COVID-19 case study.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Trends in Hospitalizations of Patients with Hepatitis C Virus in Poland between 2012 and 2022.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
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Abstract
backgroundOpioid overdose and related diseases remain a growing public health crisis in the USA. Identifying sociostructural and other contextual factors associated with adverse health outcomes is needed to improve prediction models to inform policy and interventions. We aimed to identify high-risk communities for targeted delivery of screening and prevention interventions for opioid use disorder and hepatitis C virus (HCV).
methodsIn this ecological and modelling study, we fit mixed-effects negative binomial regression models to identify factors associated with, and predict, opioid-related and HCV-related hospitalisations for ZIP code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in South Carolina, USA. All individuals aged 18 years or older living in South Carolina from Jan 1, 2016, to Dec 31, 2021, were included. Data on opioid-related and HCV-related hospitalisations, as well as data on additional individual-level variables, were collected from medical claims records, which were obtained from the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office. Demographic and socioeconomic variables were obtained from the United States Census Bureau (American Community Survey, 2021) with additional structural health-care barrier data obtained from South Carolina's Center for Rural and Primary Health Care, and the American Hospital Directory.
findingsBetween Jan 1, 2016, and Dec 31, 2021, 41 691 individuals were hospitalised for opioid misuse and 26 860 were hospitalised for HCV. There were a median of 80 (IQR 24-213) opioid-related hospitalisations and 61 (21-196) HCV-related hospitalisations per ZCTA. A standard deviation increase in ZCTA-level uninsured rate (relative risk 1·24 [95% CI 1·17-1·31]), poverty rate (1·24 [1·17-1·31]), mortality (1·18 [1·12-1·25]), and social vulnerability index (1·17 [1·10-1·24]) was significantly associated with increased combined opioid-related and HCV-related hospitalisation rates. A standard deviation increase in ZCTA-level income (0·79 [0·75-0·84]) and unemployment rate (0·87 [0·82-0·93]) was significantly associated with decreased combined opioid-related and HCV-related hospitalisations. Using 2016-20 hospitalisations as training data, our models predicted ZCTA-level opioid-related hospitalisations in 2021 with a median of 80·4% (IQR 66·8-91·1) accuracy and HCV-related hospitalisations in 2021 with a median of 75·2% (61·2-87·7) accuracy. Several underserved high-risk ZCTAs were identified for delivery of targeted interventions.
interpretationOur results suggest that individuals from economically disadvantaged and medically under-resourced communities are more likely to have an opioid-related or HCV-related hospitalisation. In conjunction with hospitalisation forecasts, our results could be used to identify and prioritise high-risk, underserved communities for delivery of field-level interventions.
fundingSouth Carolina Center for Rural and Primary Healthcare, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Library of Medicine.
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