Segregation, Income Disparities, and Survival in Hemodialysis Patients

Social and ecologic factors, such as residential segregation, are determinants of health in the general population, but how these factors associate with outcomes among patients with ESRD is not well understood. Here, we examined associations of income inequality and residence, as social determinants of health, with survival among black and white patients with ESRD. We merged U.S. Renal Data System data from 589,036 patients who started hemodialysis from 2000 through 2008 with race-specific median household income data from the Census Bureau. We used Gini Index coefficients to assess income distributional inequality and the Dissimilarity Index to determine residential segregation. Black patients lived in areas of lower median household income compared with white patients ($26,742 versus $41,922; P