Polysocial Risk Scores: Implications for Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment and Management

Abstract

Purpose of review: To review current evidence, discuss key knowledge gaps and identify opportunities for development, validation and application of polysocial risk scores (pSRS) for cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk prediction and population cardiovascular health management.

Recent findings: Limited existing evidence suggests that pSRS are promising tools to capture cumulative social determinants of health (SDOH) burden and improve CVD risk prediction beyond traditional risk factors. However, available tools lack generalizability, are cross-sectional in nature or do not assess social risk holistically across SDOH domains. Available SDOH and clinical risk factor data in large population-based databases are under-utilized for pSRS development. Recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence present unprecedented opportunities for SDOH integration and assessment in real-world data, with implications for pSRS development and validation for both clinical and healthcare utilization outcomes. pSRS presents unique opportunities to potentially improve traditional "clinical" models of CVD risk prediction. Future efforts should focus on fully utilizing available SDOH data in large epidemiological databases, testing pSRS efficacy in diverse population subgroups, and integrating pSRS into real-world clinical decision support systems to inform clinical care and advance cardiovascular health equity.

Keywords: Cardiovascular disease; Polysocial risk score; Population health management; Risk prediction; Social determinants of health.