Primary Submission Category: Migration
Migration as a mechanism for spatio-temporal patterns in health outcomes
Authors: Hannah Olson-Williams Amy Cochran
Presenting Author: Hannah Olson-Williams*
Can temporal changes in place-based health outcomes be explained by population mobility? Communities across the United States experience differential rates of inflow and outflow migration which is often connected to resources and structural factors associated with health. However, the directionality of the relationship between migration and health is difficult to parse. To better understand how human migration may affect the health of places over time, we joined county-to-county migration flow data publicly available from the IRS with county-level race-specific mortality rates from the CDC WONDER database. We then were able to create and assess a novel county-level “migration effect” on longitudinal race-ethnicity mortality trends. We used this “migration effect” to assess migration as a mechanism for differences in mortality across rural and urban counties, within US states, and between race-ethnicity identities.