Social and Behavioral Determinants of Risk for Developing Hypertension and Diabetes

Acknowledging growing interest in the social and behavioral determinants of disease development, investigators used survey data from a California health system to assess two groups of middle-aged patients: 18,000 who did not have hypertension at study entry and 36,000 who did not have diabetes. Eleven social and behavioral risk factors were evaluated, including race, financial worry, intimate partner violence, neighborhood poverty, and depressive symptoms.

During 3.5 years of follow-up, incidence of newly diagnosed hypertension ranged from 5.8% of patients with none of the specified risk factors to 7.0% for those with ≥3 factors, and incidence of newly diagnosed diabetes ranged from 3.5% for patients with none of the risk factors to 5.0% for…