Racialized economic segregation and health outcomes: A systematic review of studies that use the Index of Concentration at the Extremes for race, income, and their interaction

Anders Larrabee Sonderlund; Mia Charifson; Antoinette Schoenthaler; Traci Carson; Natasha J. Williams

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0262962

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 28, 2021
18 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Tariq Jamal Siddiqi, Editor PONE-D-21-31241Racialized economic segregation and health outcomes: A systematic review of studies using the Index of Concentration at the Extremes of race, income, and their interactionPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Larrabee Sonderlund, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 02 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ Additional Editor Comments: Sonderlund et al. has performed a systematic review, “Racialized economic segregation and health outcomes: A systematic review of studies using the Index of Concentration at the Extremes of race, income, and their interaction” in which they have shown that racialized economic segregation is strongly associated with increased risk of a range of negative health outcomes in racial and ethnic minority populations. In my opinion, this article can be improved by incorporating the following points: 1. The authors did not give p-values for the findings they obtained when addressing ethnic groups in the results. 2. When addressing ethnic differences and results which are significant or non-significant, adding the effect sizes such as the odds ratio or risk ratios found in the review, may improve the findings even further. 3. Separate tables to summarize results or making sections in the same tables for the different outcomes such as cancer, preterm birth or covid-19 etcetera, can enhance the findings of the review further. 4. A few statements about which financial adversity measures does the ICE (Race-Income) measure outperforms can contribute to enhance that point of discussion. 5. More points can be added to the discussion regarding the findings of other studies related to the outcomes assessed in this review like the results in their outcomes that are relevant to the present research to enhance the discussion. 6. When discussing barriers to improved healthcare in underserved regions, it may be helpful if the writers provide evidence of poor healthcare practice in the specified places. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262962.r001
Revision 1
28 Oct 2021 Author Response Dear Editor, Thank you for your helpful comments and suggestions for improving our manuscript. Below we have gone through each of the points you raised and revised our paper accordingly. We feel that it has improved significantly as a result. Kind regards, Anders Larrabee Sonderlund, Mia Charifson, Antoinette Schoenthaler, Traci Carson, and Natasha J. Williams. 1. The authors did not give p-values for the findings they obtained when addressing ethnic groups in the results. • We have revised Table 2 and added p-values from those papers that reported them. 2. When addressing ethnic differences and results which are significant or non-significant, adding the effect sizes such as the odds ratio or risk ratios found in the review, may improve the findings even further. • We confirm that all effects sizes found in the review are reported in Table 2. We considered including these statistics in the body text instead, but ultimately decided that a table would provide a better overview of effect sizes reported in each paper. 3. Separate tables to summarize results or making sections in the same tables for the different outcomes such as cancer, preterm birth or covid-19 etcetera, can enhance the findings of the review further. • Agreed. We have reorganized Table 2 and grouped results by outcome to reflect the four subsections of the Results section. 4. A few statements about which financial adversity measures does the ICE (Race-Income) measure outperforms can contribute to enhance that point of discussion. • This is a good point. The reviewed studies compared the ICE to either the Hardship Index or poverty measures constructed based on American Community Survey data. We have revised parts of the discussion to properly clarify this: Page 27, lines 91-94: “Further, six studies compared the statistical accuracy of the ICE to other traditional scales of disadvantage, including the Hardship Index (35, 43) and measures created from ACS data, reflecting the federal poverty line (28, 31, 33, 42). In nearly all of these comparisons, the ICE either matched or outperformed the other poverty measure (see Table 2).” 5. More points can be added to the discussion regarding the findings of other studies related to the outcomes assessed in this review like the results in their outcomes that are relevant to the present research to enhance the discussion. • We thank he editor for this suggestion. While the extant research relevant to this review is detailed to some extent in the introduction as well as the discussion (e.g., strengths and limitations section), we have attempted to accentuate these points further. Specifically, we have revised the second paragraph (Page 24, lines 11-14) of the Discussion section to emphasize the broader empirical context within which our review sits. 6. When discussing barriers to improved healthcare in underserved regions, it may be helpful if the writers provide evidence of poor healthcare practice in the specified places. • Agreed. We have revised the text on pp. 25-26 and added relevant references to this point: Page 25, lines 49-51: “Past research indicates that hospitals in deprived areas face structural obstacles to their provision of quality care, including the capacity to attract highly trained staff and secure state-of-the-art equipment (52-55).” Page 26, lines 64-65: “In other words, the extent to which racialized economic segregation restricts access to quality health care and health promoting and prevention resources appears to account for the disproportionate negative health outcomes among racial and ethnic minority populations.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262962.r002
10 Jan 2022 Decision Letter - Tariq Jamal Siddiqi, Editor Racialized economic segregation and health outcomes: A systematic review of studies using the Index of Concentration at the Extremes of race, income, and their interaction PONE-D-21-31241R1 Dear Dr. Larrabee Sonderlund, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Tariq Jamal Siddiqi Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262962.r003
Formally Accepted
20 Jan 2022 Acceptance Letter - Tariq Jamal Siddiqi, Editor PONE-D-21-31241R1 Racialized economic segregation and health outcomes: A systematic review of studies using the Index of Concentration at the Extremes of race, income, and their interaction Dear Dr. Larrabee Sonderlund: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Tariq Jamal Siddiqi Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262962.r004

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