Difference by Socioeconomic Category
We identified significantly worse socioeconomic indicators for patients
who attend our satellite clinics as compared to our UAB clinic for
poverty level (20.3±4.2 vs 16.8±3.6, p=0.0001), median household income
($45,704±7,048 vs $52,841±7,853 p=0.0001) and the percent of adults in
the community with less than a high school diploma (15.6±3.5 vs
12.2±3.6, p=0.0001) (Table 4). When analyzing HbF by socioeconomic data,
we did not identify an association between HbF levels with poverty level
(p= 1.0), median household income (p=0.8) or percent of adults in the
community with less than a high school diploma (p=0.7). Finally, we
repeated our regression analysis to determine if community poverty level
or median household income impacted HbF value in addition to our prior
variables of clinic location, age, and number of clinic visits. Again,
only number of clinic visits (p=0.02) and age (p=0.003) significantly
impacted HbF but clinic location did not significantly impact HbF when
including socioeconomic data.