{"id":132597,"date":"2025-02-21T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T19:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?post_type=bu-article&p=132597"},"modified":"2025-05-01T15:17:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T19:17:15","slug":"measuring-poverty-better-to-strengthen-tuberculosis-research","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/news-events\/articles\/2025\/measuring-poverty-better-to-strengthen-tuberculosis-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring Poverty Better to Strengthen Tuberculosis Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Drug-resistant, Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, the pathogen responsible for causing the disease tuberculosis (TB). A 3D computer-generated image. Photo by CDC<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMeasuring Poverty Better to Strengthen Tuberculosis Research\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n
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Tuberculosis (TB) has long been recognized as a disease of poverty, yet most TB research does not measure poverty in a meaningful way. A new review<\/a> in the journal BMC Global and Public Health examines existing methods for assessing socioeconomic status in TB studies and highlights their shortcomings. The authors call for better, standardized poverty metrics to improve research and policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Led by researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Brown University and Oxford University, the review explores different ways poverty has been measured in TB studies\u2014including income-based measures, wealth indices and multidimensional poverty indices (MPIs). The authors found that many commonly used tools fail to capture key aspects of deprivation relevant to TB risk and treatment, such as food insecurity, overcrowded housing and access to healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pranay Sinha<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoverty isn\u2019t just background context\u2014it\u2019s central to understanding who develops TB and who struggles with treatment,\u201d says corresponding author Pranay Sinha, MD<\/a>, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University. \u201cYet, many TB studies rely on outdated or oversimplified measures of socioeconomic status, limiting what we can learn and how we respond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the review, the researchers also assessed how frequently observational TB studies accounted for poverty and found that of the 100 most recently published observational TB studies, nearly 70% did not include any measure of socioeconomic status. According to the authors, this lack of measurement can lead to misinterpretations of TB risk factors and policies that fail to reach the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t measure deprivation well, we can\u2019t address it effectively,\u201d said co-first author Chelsie Cintron<\/a>, MPH, a third-year doctoral student at Brown University and a senior research study coordinator at Boston Medical Center. \u201cWe found that most TB research does not include even basic socioeconomic data. That\u2019s a missed opportunity because poverty affects every stage of the TB journey\u2014from exposure to treatment outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers argue that adopting tools like the global multidimensional poverty index \u2013 which has been refined and applied in various contexts by co-senior author Jakob Dirksen<\/a> MSc, MPP, a research and policy officer at Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative \u2013 could lead to more targeted interventions and stronger policy recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poverty is central to understanding who develops TB and who struggles with treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24243,"featured_media":133737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[94],"bu-publication":[367],"medicine-article-category":[],"medicine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[385],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/132597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132597"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/132597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133739,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/132597\/revisions\/133739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132597"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=132597"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-article-category?post=132597"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-topic?post=132597"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=132597"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=132597"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=132597"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=132597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}