Association Between Insurance Types & Sources of Health Information: Potential for Community Outreach

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.