# Social Vulnerability of Older Adults and the Risk of Medical Hospitalization

> **NIH NIH R03** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · 2020 · $121,062

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Decades of research establish that social determinants of older adults affect their health, yet, we lack ways to
implement this knowledge. We fall short without a coherent synthesis: What basic social determinants should
an investigator include in their aging cohort study? How can a Medicare accountable care organization include
social determinants to identify at-risk patients in the population for which they are accountable? Lacking
practical ways to incorporate social risk factors, risk models often exclude social risk factors, and in doing so,
risk creating biased estimates. For practical applications in research, population health, and policy settings it is
useful to identify a subset for social determinants that predict risk efficiently. Prior attempts have fallen short by
not accounting for the unique social determinant of older adults. To address this gap, we propose a study to
develop a social vulnerability index – a summary measure reflective of the social risk factors of older adults.
We will test the social vulnerability index’s ability to predict medical hospitalization, a common health event
among older adults, and assess the index’s ability to improve traditional risk models. The central hypothesis
is that social risk factors – specifically aging-associated social risk factors – will significantly improve the
predictive model discrimination of traditional risk models. This hypothesis will be tested using the nationally-
representative sample of older adults in the Health and Retirement Study Medicare-linked cohort. We have two
specific aims: 1) Develop a social vulnerability index to predict medical hospitalization and 2) Assess the
ability of the social vulnerability index to improve upon traditional comorbidity-based prediction models. This
project is innovative and significant because it will develop a summary measure of social vulnerability that
can be used to improve prediction. This will, in turn, will improve the quality of risk models used in research,
population health, and health policy.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10017127
- **Project number:** 5R03AG060090-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
- **Principal Investigator:** Sachin J Shah
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $121,062
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-15 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10017127

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10017127, Social Vulnerability of Older Adults and the Risk of Medical Hospitalization (5R03AG060090-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10017127. Licensed CC0.

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