Diabetic Foot Ulcer and Transportation

Transportation is paramount to health care access and minority populations face

disproportionate transportation barriers in the US. Despite the advent of telehealth, most patient provider interactions require patient transportation to a healthcare facility.  This project will investigate associations between measures of “transportation vulnerability” at the neighborhood-level using diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) as a chronic disease model. This will be accomplished by analyzing Georgia state-wide hospital billing databases (Aim 1) and detailed patient- level records of two Atlanta-based large health systems (Aim 2). We chose DFU as model because they are a devastating diabetes complication preceding most of the 100,000 diabetes-related lower extremity amputations performed yearly in US. Furthermore, low- income and racial minority groups experience higher burdens of DFUs and amputations. 

Study locations: Atlanta, GA

Principal Investigators: Marcos Schechter and Howard Chang

Funder: National Institutes of Health (R21MD017943)

Category: Built Environment and Health