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Association Between Insurance Types & Sources of Health Information: Potential for Community Outreach
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Anita Hawkins, PHD
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School of Community Health and Policy, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD
Joy P. Nanda, DSc, MS, MHS, MBA
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Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Background: Public health practitioners strive to inform the public about health issues. But, are media or pamphlets alone sufficient in garnering the attention of the community served by public health practitioners? Question remains as what can be done to ensure that health information (HI) reaches target groups. Individuals with no health insurance may be a group receiving little or no HI. Objective: We examined if uninsured individuals are more likely to receive HI from non-print sources (family, friends, co-workers, television and radio) than individuals with insurance e.g. public, private or military. Methods: We analyzed 19,258 individuals who responded to the 2007 data from National Assessment of Adult Literacy Survey. Respondents provided information on their health care financing and information sources, in addition to a battery of socio-demographic queries. Results/Findings: Our findings indicate that uninsured individuals were at greater risk of receiving HI from non-print sources than those insured (OR: 5.78; 95% CI, 3.63 – 9.21). This finding persisted after adjusting for age, education, health status, employment, personal and household income(OR: 8.85; 95% CI, 3.15 – 26.14) Conclusion/public health implications: Our results indicate the need for comprehensive approaches to inform and educate the uninsured community about health issues. Public health practitioners therefore need to find new and innovative ways to reach the insured and uninsured.
Learning Objectives: 1. Differentiate socio-demographic characteristics of uninsured and insured individuals
2. Assess the relationship between insurance type and source of health information receipt
Keywords: Health Literacy, Health Communications
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Graduate student pursuing research in health literacy improvement for minority population
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
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