Disparities in joint exposure to environmental and social stressors in urban households in Greater Boston

Objectives: Understanding how environmental and social stressors cluster is critical to explaining and addressing health disparities. It remains unclear how these stressors cluster at fine spatial resolution in low to mediumincome, urban households. We explored patterns of environmental and social exposures at the household-level and potential predictors of these joint exposures in two environmental justice communities in the Greater Boston area. Methods: We recruited 150 households in Chelsea, MA and the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, MA, between 2016 and 2019 and collected data on two domains: environmental and social stressor. For each domain, we fit Latent Class Analysis (LCA) models to exposure data to assess intra-domain variability, and cross-classified the resultant classes to identify joint exposure profiles. We compared differences in the distribution of these profiles by participants' demographic and household characteristics using chi 2, Fisher's exact, Analysis of Variance, and Kruskal-Wallis tests.Results: We identified two latent classes in each domain: High environmental (n = 90; 60.4%), Low environmental (n = 59; 39.6%), High Social (n = 31; 20.8%), and Low Social (n = 118; 79.2%). Cross-classification yielded four joint exposure profiles: Both Low (n = 46, 30.9%); Both High (n = 18, 12.1%); High environmental-Low Social (n = 72, 48.3%); and Low environmental-High Social (n = 13, 8.7%). Significant group differences were found by housing type (e.g., single-family vs. multi-family) (Fisher's exact p = 0.0016), housing tenure (p = 0.0007), and study site (p < 0.0001). We also observed differences by race/ethnicity, income, and education: households that were Hispanic/Latinx, below the poverty level, and with lower education were more likely to be in the Both High group.Conclusions: Our analyses confirmed that environmental and social stressors cluster in socially disadvantaged households. Housing type, housing tenure, and location of the residence were also strong predictors of cluster membership, with renter and multi-family residents at risk of high exposures to environmental and social stressors.

Automated summary

Understanding the clustering patterns of environmental and social stressors in low to medium-income, urban households is essential for addressing health disparities. This study examined household-level exposures and potential predictors of these joint exposures in two environmental justice communities in the Greater Boston area. The findings revealed that environmental and social stressors clustered in socially disadvantaged households, with housing type, housing tenure, and location of the residence being strong predictors. Renters and multi-family residents were at a higher risk of experiencing high exposures to these stressors.