Social Determinants of Health Database (Beta Version)

These files contain the beta version of AHRQ’s database on Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), which was created under a project funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Trust Fund. The purpose of this project is to create easy to use, easily linkable SDOH-focused data to use in PCOR research, inform approaches to address emerging health issues, and ultimately contribute to improved health outcomes.

These SDOH beta data files are curated from existing Federal datasets and other publicly available data sources. The purpose of the files is to make it easier to find a range of well documented, readily linkable SDOH variables across domains without having to access multiple source files, facilitating SDOH research and analysis.

Variables in the files correspond to five key SDOH domains: social context (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, veteran status), economic context (e.g., income, unemployment rate), education, physical infrastructure (e.g, housing, crime, transportation), and healthcare context (e.g., health insurance). The files can be linked to other data by geography (county and zip code). The database includes two documentation files and two types of publicly available data files.

The data contained in the SDOH beta data files are drawn from multiple sources and variables may have differing availability, patterns of missing, and methodological considerations across sources, geographies, and years. Users should refer to the codebook and data source documentation, as well as the original data sources, to help identify these patterns. If users have questions, suggestions, or identify any issues with the data please send feedback to SDOH@ahrq.hhs.gov.

The SDOH beta data files are a starting point to inform additional work AHRQ is undertaking to develop SDOH data. Given the importance of SDOH to a range of pressing healthcare priorities, AHRQ is making these initial “beta” files publicly available in the hope that these files can begin to fill a near-term need for readily available data on SDOH.

Download Data

Visualizing SDOH Data

To demonstrate the possibilities of the SDOH data files, AHRQ has created the visualization Poverty and Access to Internet, by County that shows county-level percentages of households with computers and smartphones and percentages of households with any type of broadband (including cellular data plans). Because these rates increase with income, the map also shows county-level percentages of individuals in poverty.

SDOH Environmental Scan

AHRQ conducted an environmental scan (XLSX, 46 KB) of SDOH data sources to inform the development of AHRQ’s SDOH beta data files publicly released in December 2020. AHRQ is releasing the environmental scan as a resource for analysts interested in identifying SDOH-related data sources. The scan aims to identify as many SDOH data sources as possible as of July 2020 at the ZIP Code, county, and State level for the domains of social context, economic context, education, physical infrastructure, and healthcare context. The scan is organized in an Excel spreadsheet to maintain the filter functionality of each column in the scan so that analysts can sort by variables such as SDOH domain or level of geography.