The association between environmental quality and diabetes in the U.S.

Population-based county-level estimates for diagnosed (DDP), undiagnosed (UDP), and total diabetes prevalence (TDP) were acquired from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) for the years 2004-2012 (Evaluation 2017). Prevalence estimates were calculated using a two-stage approach. The first stage used National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data to predict high fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels (≥126 mg/dL) and/or hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) levels (≥6.5% [48 mmol/mol]) based on self-reported demographic and behavioral characteristics (Dwyer-Lindgren, Mackenbach et al. 2016). This model was then applied to Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data to impute high FPG and/or A1C status for each BRFSS respondent (Dwyer-Lindgren, Mackenbach et al. 2016). The second stage used the imputed BRFSS data to fit a series of small area models, which were used to predict the county-level prevalence of each of the diabetes-related outcomes (Dwyer-Lindgren, Mackenbach et al. 2016). Diagnosed diabetes was defined as the proportion of adults (age 20+ years) who reported a previous diabetes diagnosis, represented as an age-standardized prevalence percentage. Undiagnosed diabetes was defined as proportion of adults (age 20+ years) who have a high FPG or HbA1C but did not report a previous diagnosis of diabetes. Total diabetes was defined as the proportion of adults (age 20+ years) who reported a previous diabetes diagnosis and/or had a high FPG/HbA1C. The age-standardized diabetes prevalence (%) was used as the outcome.

The EQI was constructed for 2000-2005 for all US counties and is composed of five domains (air, water, built, land, and sociodemographic), each composed of variables to represent the environmental quality of that domain. Domain-specific EQIs were developed using principal components analysis (PCA) to reduce these variables within each domain while the overall EQI was constructed from a second PCA from these individual domains (L. C. Messer et al., 2014). To account for differences in environment across rural and urban counties, the overall and domain-specific EQIs were stratified by rural urban continuum codes (RUCCs) (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2015). This dataset is not publicly accessible because: EPA cannot release personally identifiable information regarding living individuals, according to the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This dataset contains information about human research subjects. Because there is potential to identify individual participants and disclose personal information, either alone or in combination with other datasets, individual level data are not appropriate to post for public access. Restricted access may be granted to authorized persons by contacting the party listed. It can be accessed through the following means: Human health data are not available publicly. EQI data are available at: https://edg.epa.gov/data/Public/ORD/NHEERL/EQI. Format: Data are stored as csv files. 

This dataset is associated with the following publication:
Jagai, J., A. Krajewski, S. Shaikh, D. Lobdell, and R. Sargis. Association between environmental quality and diabetes in the U.S.A..   Journal of Diabetes Investigation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, USA, 11(2): 315-324, (2020).

Tags: air-quality, built-environment, diabetes, environmental-quality, land-quality, sociodemographic-quality, water-quality
Organization: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency