Oral

The five conclusions of this session are as follows: 1.Unmet need may be necessary, but is not sufficient, to explain free clinic growth and retention 2.Although one's health is expected to decline over time, results suggest that the rate of decline can be buffered by having health insurance or more generally, broader access to services, earlier in life 3.Disparities are in the opposite direction from those habitually expected: low-income non-Hispanic Blacks are in fact more likely to obtain cancer screening procedures in a timely manner compared to low-income Non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics 4.Usual source of care (USOC) is associated with lower prevalence of screened depression among the U.S. community-dwelling elderly 5.The proportion of Americans who describe the hospital emergency department or other outpatient unit as their usual source of care has declined slightly over the past decade, from 3.1% in 1997 to 2.2% in 2006

Session Objectives: There are five objectives for this session. To: 1.Describe the population characteristics, structure of the ambulatory care safety net, and state policies that explain why some urban communities have more free clinics than others 2.Assess the role that health service use and access may play on individuals' health over time 3.Identify racial/ethnic disparities in cancer screening behaviors 4.Estimate the effect of having a usual source of care on screened depression among Medicare beneficaries 5.Assess trends in hospital utilization as a usual source of care