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Authors of a study published in the Annals of Surgery wanted to determine the effect of community-level socioeconomic distress on survival outcomes in patients undergoing heart transplantation.Heart transplant recipients from January 2004 to June 2022 were identified from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.Socioeconomic distress was evaluated using the Distressed Communities Index, which is a composite score determined for each zip code using such indicators as education, housing, unemployment, poverty, household income, and business growth.The score ranges from 0 to 100, with communities in the highest quintile considered distressed and those in the other quintiles considered nondistressed.Of the 36,777 patients who underwent heart transplantation, 7,450 were from a distressed community.Patients from distressed communities had inferior three-and five-year mortality and graft survival compared with patients from nondistressed communities.The authors concluded that interventions are needed to address the causes of socioeconomic inequities in transplantation outcomes.