Teens and healthcare services: What factors predict their use?

Background: Despite professional consensus on the importance of annual checkups, adolescents see physicians less frequently than any other age group. Many teens, however, have health concerns that they would like to discuss with a health professional.

Purpose: To identify barriers–structural and perceived–that interfere with adolescents getting annual checkups especially in the context of a school-based health clinic.

Significance: Most adolescents in the US report being in good health, but many develop unhealthy habits, engage in risky behaviors and have mental and physical conditions that can jeopardize their immediate and future health. Nearly three-quarters of adolescent mortality is due to preventable causes. Behaviors learned in adolescence also contribute to leading causes of adult morbidity and mortality.

Methodology: Students attending a large (>1000) ethnically diverse high school with a school-based health clinic, were asked to complete a survey about their health care use-especially prevention, barriers/incentives to using the school health clinic, their satisfaction with services, their health status and communications with their doctor. Approximately 400 surveys are expected to be collected during February-June of 2012. Comparisons to be made include: the relationship of healthcare use and satisfaction with perceived barriers, preventive health behaviors and communication with providers.

Conclusions/Recommendations: Means to increase the rate of annual preventive checkups by adolescents are clearly needed. Large disparities exist in the rates of adolescents who get annual preventive checkups based on race/ethnicity, gender, age, socio-economic status and insurance status. Adolescent beliefs, attitudes and fears also may pose substantial barriers.