Department of Statistics, College of Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, United States.
Predictive Toxicology Branch, Division of Translational Toxicology, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Durham, NC 27713, United States.
Am J Epidemiol. 2024 Oct 7;193(10):1384-1391. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwae093.
Human-induced climate change has led to more frequent and severe flooding around the globe. We examined the association between flood risk and the prevalence of coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma, and poor mental health in the United States, while taking into account different levels of social vulnerability. We aggregated flood risk variables from First Street Foundation data by census tract and used principal component analysis to derive a set of 5 interpretable flood risk factors. The dependent variables were census-tract level disease prevalences generated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Bayesian spatial conditional autoregressive models were fit on these data to quantify the relationship between flood risk and health outcomes under different stratifications of social vulnerability. We show that 3 flood risk principal components had small but significant associations with each of the health outcomes across the different stratifications of social vulnerability. Our analysis gives, to our knowledge, the first United States-wide estimates of the associated effects of flood risk on specific health outcomes. We also show that social vulnerability is an important moderator of the relationship between flood risk and health outcomes. Our approach can be extended to other ecological studies that examine the health impacts of climate hazards. This article is part of a Special Collection on Environmental Epidemiology.
人为引起的气候变化导致了全球范围内更频繁和更严重的洪灾。我们研究了美国洪灾风险与冠心病、高血压、哮喘和心理健康状况不佳之间的关联，同时考虑了不同程度的社会脆弱性。我们通过普查区聚合了来自第一街基金会的数据中的洪水风险变量，并使用主成分分析得出了一组 5 个可解释的洪水风险因素。因变量是由疾病控制和预防中心生成的普查区级疾病流行率。我们对这些数据进行了贝叶斯空间条件自回归模型拟合，以量化在不同社会脆弱性分层下洪水风险与健康结果之间的关系。我们表明，3 个洪水风险主成分与每个健康结果之间存在小但显著的关联，跨越了不同社会脆弱性的分层。我们的分析提供了，据我们所知，美国范围内洪水风险对特定健康结果相关影响的首次估计。我们还表明，社会脆弱性是洪水风险与健康结果之间关系的一个重要调节因素。我们的方法可以扩展到其他研究气候危害对健康影响的生态研究。本文是环境流行病学特刊的一部分。
