Impact on quality of life, health care access, and health care utilization of individuals with vitiligo: an analysis of the All of Us research program

Abstract

Vitiligo is an autoimmune skin depigmenting disorder that can negatively impact quality of life. A new FDA approved treatment for vitiligo offers considerable promise, and to maximize benefits strategies to implementation should consider disease burden, healthcare access, and healthcare utilization of individuals with vitiligo. Using the All of Us Research Program's large data set, including survey responses, we investigated these outcomes among participants with and without vitiligo. Our analysis used quality of life, delayed care due to an obstacle, and seeing a doctor in the past year as dichotomized proxies for disease burden, healthcare access, and healthcare utilization. The results show that people with vitiligo are more likely to report worse quality of life but ostensibly greater healthcare access and utilization compared to people without vitiligo. However, these relationships are not significant when adjusted for demographics, socioeconomic characteristics, and comorbidities of vitiligo. Prior research has shown non-Caucasian individuals have worse health outcomes in general, and worse quality of life within the vitiligo population. Our data demonstrated consistent findings; moreover, we found that non-Caucasian individuals with vitiligo had inferior healthcare access and lower health care utilization than Caucasian individuals. Implementation of new treatments for vitiligo should prioritize disadvantaged individuals to improve health equity.

Keywords: Healthcare Access; Healthcare utilization; Quality of life; Vitiligo.