The Importance of Context and Spatial Scale when Measuring Health Outcomes in Latino Destinations: Evidence from a Replication of Maldonado et al. 2023
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While research supports the idea that context may affect Latino health outcomes, evidence of the effect living in established or new destinations has on Latino health outcomes remains limited. Existing explanations suggest that key processes may be operating at a variety of spatial scales, but empirical studies are typically conducted at only one scale of analysis. To examine these issues, we replicate and extend the analysis of Maldonado et al. (2023). Our work demonstrates how destination assignment and the analytical handling of spatial scale can alter estimates of the relationship between social context and health. We find that while the authors created an adjustment for destination type, they made no similar adjustments for other contextual factors. We demonstrate that accounting for state-level contextual variation alters estimates of destination-related effects. Rather than suggesting the absence of differences between the effects of new and established destinations, we argue against drawing strong conclusions because of a likely mismatch between the spatial scale of the processes driving Latino health outcomes and the spatial scale of measurement. We also argue that multi-scale studies are needed to reliably estimate the effect destination context has on Latino health. More broadly, while we were able to replicate most of the statistical results of Maldonado et al., we encountered several challenges that raised questions about the associations identified by the original authors. By documenting and sharing the procedures we used to address these questions, we increase the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of the original work and provide a model approach that others can build upon.