Health Disparities by Education Across U.S. States: Influence of State Policies and Contexts

Anna Zajacova , University of Western Ontario
Jennifer Karas Montez, Syracuse University

The impact of policies and broader socio-political contexts across US states is an emerging area of research in population health. In contrast, the association between educational attainment and health is a well-established fact. We merge these two lines of inquiry and ask: which state-level characteristics influence the individual-level effects of education on health? We use 2015-2017 BRFSS data on 748,000 adults age 30-64 in all US States. We describe the education-health disparities across states; we then use multilevel models with extensive set of state-level variables to assess how state policies and contexts influence the disparities. Preliminary findings show large variation across states in health levels and in education-health disparities. The state variation is large enough that adults with lower schooling in some states have better health than adults with more schooling in other states. We will examine which state-level factors explain the observed differences in health levels and disparities.

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 Presented in Session 139. Political Determinants of Health and Mortality