
A study published in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation suggests health care providers who treat people with COPD need to focus on socioeconomic factors along with coexisting health conditions or comorbidities, in addition to addressing symptoms.
This could go a long way toward addressing health care disparities among this patient population as well as promoting diversity in research.
According to a news release from the COPD Foundation, research has linked poverty with COPD and its related comorbidities, which include cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and metabolic disorders such as diabetes.http://doi.org/10.15326/jcopdf.2024.0558
The authors of the paper provided evidence on the need to classify COPD as syndemic — i.e., two or more diseases within specific populations with common social factors that increase disease burden. They suggest that this approach to COPD would promote more holistic care, identify and address socioeconomic factors that contribute to a person’s risk of developing COPD and demonstrate the need to actively enroll research participants from minority populations.
“Syndemic theory examines why health and social issues accumulate in particular populations,” said lead author Sophia Hayes, MD, MS, a pulmonary and critical care clinical and research fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Applying this framework to COPD would encourage more points of intervention to help address risk factors for COPD, like exposure to secondhand smoke, air pollution and poor nutrition, which are associated with marginalization and lower socioeconomic status. By acknowledging these connections between chronic diseases, we can focus on value-based collaborative care to address these health inequities and increase the presence of poor and minority communities in research.”