The challenges of measuring socioeconomic inequality in pharmacoepidemiology studies.

This article focuses on the challenges and recommendations for measuring socioeconomic status (SES) in pharmacoepidemiology research using retrospective real-world clinical data. It highlights the limitations of current SES measures, including individual-level data gaps and the problematic use of ZIP Codes and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) for community-level SES indicators like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). The authors recommend increasing the routine collection of standardized patient-reported SES data, moving beyond ZIP Codes to more precise geographic units, and incorporating expertise in geographic information systems (GIS), demography, and sociology into pharmacoepidemiology teams. These steps aim to improve the understanding of SES effects on health outcomes, such as vaccine uptake, and to address health disparities more effectively.