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sociome

INFRA · APIS
Velocity0.0

Operationalizing Social Determinants of Health Data for Researchers

github.com/clevelandclinicqhs/sociome ↗

A six-year silence ends with the Area Deprivation Index rebuilt on the 2020 census.

social-determinantscensus-datahealth-equityarea-deprivation-indexgeospatial
◆Current state
sociome computes the Area Deprivation Index and related measures of social determinants of health from US census data. After patch releases in 2019 and 2020 the package went quiet, and version 3.0.0 in January 2026 returns with complete 2020 decennial census support, expanded ZCTA coverage, and helper objects that tell users up front which dataset, year and geography combinations the census API will actually serve.
◆Where it's heading
The package's usefulness is tied to a data generation, and this release moves it a full census cycle forward. The other changes point the same way: better input checking so failures surface before an API call rather than after, a documented availability matrix, and removal of the seed argument from the three main entry points. That last one is a breaking change and suggests the underlying computation stopped being stochastic in the way it was.
◆Prediction
With 2020 support landed, the pressure shifts to annual American Community Survey vintages rather than decennial ones. Expect maintenance around that rather than another overhaul.

◆Recent moves

  1. 7mo ago

    2020 decennial census support lands in a breaking overhaul

    ⚡ SPARK

    The release that makes the package current again after six years, moving its underlying data a full census cycle forward and adding the machinery to tell users what the census API can serve before they ask for it.

    View source ↗
  2. 6y ago

    Adjusts for changed tigris documentation files

    A one-line release adjusting for changed tigris documentation files. The last activity before the package went quiet for six years.

    View source ↗
  3. 7y ago

    Fixes crash on 1990 decennial census data

    A single bug fix for crashes when requesting 1990 decennial data. Narrow correction to an existing path.

    View source ↗
  4. 7y ago

    Decennial census data supported; geometry off by default

    The original 1.0 release, notable for the same concern that drives 3.0.0 seventeen years of census data later: making decennial data work alongside the survey data the package started with. Turning the geometry argument off by default is the pragmatic half, since fetching boundaries is the slow part of any census call.

    View source ↗