Understanding the impact of social determinants of health in hematology: a scoping review of trends across journals and over time

Addressing social determinants of health is increasingly recognized as a critical priority in medicine to optimize care delivery to all patients. To support healthcare providers, researchers, and the hematology field to process/synthesize the rapidly expanding hematology social determinants of health literature, we conducted a scoping review to catalogue/describe recent hematology social determinants works. Our goals were to highlight the state-of-the-art in hematology social determinants research, describe trends in this literature across journals/conferences and over time, identify gaps, and inspire efforts to improve health across populations. Our search returned 602 hematology articles and 153 abstracts. Most works examined racial or socioeconomic disparities among adults with hematologic malignancies or who are hematopoietic cell transplant/cell therapy recipients. In contrast, few explored basic science correlates of disparities, approaches to optimize collection/recording/reporting/use of social determinants of health data, or interventions/educational initiatives to address care inequities. Many vulnerable populations were understudied, including Indigenous peoples, people living with disabilities, transgender/gender non-binary peoples, and disparities across parity, religion, or immigration/legal status. Only a minority of works considered intersectionality across multiple dimensions of disparities. Although both the number and proportion of social determinants works increased over time, there were imbalances in where these works were published. Overall, this review is an important tool to advance hematology population health, highlight hematology social determinants of health research productivity, inform development of research agendas and priorities for societies/funders, and support researchers to address identified gaps. Closing these gaps will be essential to improve delivery of safe and effective hematologic care for all.