Social Determinants of Health and Health-Related Quality of Life Following Pediatric Septic Shock: Secondary Analysis of the Life After Pediatric Sepsis Evaluation Dataset, 2014-2017.

Objectives: Social determinants of health (SDOH) are associated with disparities in disease severity and in-hospital outcomes among critically ill children. It is unknown whether SDOH are associated with later outcomes. We evaluated associations between SDOH measures and mortality, new functional morbidity, and health-related quality of life (HRQL) decline among children surviving septic shock.

Design: Secondary analysis of the Life After Pediatric Sepsis Evaluation (LAPSE) prospective cohort study was conducted between 2014 and 2017.

Setting: Twelve academic U.S. PICUs were involved in the study.

Patients: Children younger than 18 years with community-acquired septic shock were involved in the study.

Interventions: None.

Measurements and main results: We assessed associations between race, ethnicity, income, education, marital status, insurance, language, and home U.S. postal code with day 28 mortality, new functional morbidity at discharge per day 28, and HRQL decline using logistic regression. Of 389 patients, 32% ( n = 98) of families had household income less than $50,000 per year. Median Pediatric Risk of Mortality (PRISM) score was 11 (interquartile range 6, 17). We found that English language and Area Deprivation Index less than 50th percentile were associated with higher PRISM scores. Mortality was 6.7% ( n = 26), new functional morbidity occurred in 21.8% ( n = 78) of patients, and HRQL decline by greater than 10% occurred in 31.0% of patients ( n = 63). We failed to identify any association between SDOH measures and mortality, new functional morbidity, or HRQL decline. We are unable to exclude the possibility that annual household income greater than or equal to $50,000 was associated with up to 81% lesser odds of mortality and, in survivors, more than three-fold greater odds of HRQL decline by greater than 10%.

Conclusions: In this secondary analysis of the 2014-2017 LAPSE dataset, we failed to identify any association between SDOH measures and in-hospital or postdischarge outcomes following pediatric septic shock. This finding may be reflective of the high illness severity and single disease (sepsis) of the cohort, with contribution of clinical factors to functional and HRQL outcomes predominating over prehospital and posthospital SDOH factors.