Multidimensional social exposure clusters and incident multimorbidity in a population-based cohort.

Most research examines individual determinants in isolation, potentially obscuring socially patterned subgroups relevant to multimorbidity risk.

Chronic disease, and subsequent multimorbidity status were identified through linkage to administrative health data until 2022.

Unsupervised clustering identified six distinct social exposure profiles, with multimorbidity onset differing across profiles and elevated risk observed across multiple patterns of social disadvantage, rather than following a simple graded gradient.