Neighborhood deprivation and morbid obesity: Insights from the Houston Methodist Cardiovascular Disease Health System Learning Registry

This study examined the relationship between a validated measure of socioeconomic deprivation, such as the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), and morbid obesity. We used cross-sectional data on adult patients (≥18 years) in the Houston Methodist Cardiovascular Disease Health System Learning Registry (located in Houston, Texas, USA) between June 2016 and July 2021. Each patient was grouped by quintiles of ADI, with higher quintiles signaling greater deprivation. BMI was calculated using measured height and weight with morbid obesity defined as ≥ 40 kg/m². Multivariable logistic regression models were used to examine the association between ADI and morbid obesity adjusting for demographic (age, sex, and race/ethnicity) factors. Out of the 751,174 adults with an ADI ranking included in the analysis, 6.9 % had morbid obesity (n = 51,609). Patients in the highest ADI quintile had a higher age-adjusted prevalence (10.9 % vs 3.3 %), and about 4-fold odds (aOR, 3.8; 95 % CI = 3.6, 3.9) of morbid obesity compared to the lowest ADI quintile. We tested for and found interaction effects between ADI and each demographic factor, with stronger ADI-morbid obesity association observed for patients that were female, Hispanic, non-Hispanic White and 40–65 years old. The highest ADI quintile also had a high prevalence (44 %) of any obesity (aOR, 2.2; 95 % CI = 2.1, 2.2). In geospatial mapping, areas with higher ADI were more likely to have higher proportion of patients with morbid obesity. Census-based measures, like the ADI, may be informative for area-level obesity reduction strategies as it can help identify neighborhoods at high odds of having patients with morbid obesity.