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Background

Although much effort has been made by public health agencies to geographically plot chronic diseases at the national, state, and city levels, information is limited on how disease is distributed in smaller geographic areas or populations, such as a health center population (4). Our objective was to identify patterns of type 2 diabetes in a patient population of a large urban federally qualified health center by using census tracts as a proxy for neighborhoods. This approach expands on other longitudinal studies that found associations between rates of type 2 diabetes and neighborhood social and physical environment characteristics such as access to healthy foods (5–7).