Leah Lawrence

Urban Health Today

A new study exploring social factors associated with delayed diagnosis of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) found that time to diagnosis was equitable across race and ethnicity. However, a difference existed in time to diagnosis among communities with longer travel times to treatment centers. Because time to treatment center could be a surrogate for social determinants of health (SDOH), &ldquo;future research should aim to further explore the drivers of this association and develop and test novel models of care delivery to improve access and timeliness of care to affected communities,&rdquo; Joi F. McLaughlin, of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues wrote in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.The researchers enrolled 869 patients with newly diagnosed IBD from 22 treatment sites between 2019 and 2022. Participants were asked about race, ethnicity, time between symptom onset and diagnosis, and other SDOH; complete data were available for 746. The mean time to diagnosis was 265.9 days. Patients with Crohn disease had more than double the time to diagnosis compared to ulcerative colitis (odds ratio [OR]=2.6). Other factors associated with longer time to diagnosis were having two or more other health conditions (OR=1.8) and longer travel time to clinic (compared to 1 hour: OR=1.7; &gt;2 hours: OR=1.8).&ldquo;Notably, we did not observe differences in time to diagnosis by race, ethnicity, or household income in unadjusted or adjusted analyses, suggesting equitable IBD diagnostic care,&rdquo; the researchers wrote. The finding of delayed diagnosis with increased travel time suggests &ldquo;an urgent need to evaluate innovative models to provide timely and efficient care to underserved patients with transportation barriers.&rdquo;

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Travel Time to Treatment Center Linked With Delayed Pediatric IBD Diagnosis

Gastroenterology

A study explored social factors associated with delayed diagnosis of pediatric IBD.

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