Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
Preventive care use among Hispanic adults with limited comfort speaking English: An analysis of the medical expenditure panel survey data.
Language barriers have been associated with worse access to healthcare and poorer health outcomes. To assess differences in access to care and utilization of healthcare services between Hispanic adults and non-Hispanic white adults (NHW), we used the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (2013-2016) to compare Hispanic adults who expressed limited comfort speaking in English (LCE) with Hispanic adults who were comfortable speaking in English (CE) and NHW adults. Hispanic adults with CE were less likely than NHW adults to have a usual source of care, use preventive services, including cervical cancer screening, and healthcare services. ⋯ After adjustment, use of all cancer screening tests were similar. Eliminating disparities for Hispanic adults will require a multi-pronged approach to address access to healthcare and other social determinants of health, including poverty, employment discrimination, and educational inequities. The public health community can help improve health literacy, address barriers to care, and provide appropriate language assistance at point of care using culturally-competent means to promote greater utilization of preventive services, including demand for and delivery of cancer screenings.
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
Racial/ethnic inequalities in cervical cancer screening in the United States: An outcome reclassification to better inform interventions and benchmarks.
In the United states (U. S.), prevailing understanding suggests significant racial/ethnic inequalities in cervical cancer screening exist. However, recent findings elsewhere in North America indicate the magnitude of these inequalities depend on the way screening is defined: lifetime screening versus up-to-date screening. ⋯ However, among women who had been screened at least once in their lifetime, an inverse association was observed between being a member of a racial/ethnic minority group and not being up-to-date with screening (e.g. PRasian vs white = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.6-0.9). Physicians and public health institutions concerned with monitoring racial/ethnic inequalities should consider adding lifetime screening as a primary benchmark, as this outcome implies different intervention targets to address inequalities and the differential burden of cervical cancer.
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
Review Meta AnalysisPsychological violence in dating relationships among adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prevention programs.
Teen Psychological Dating Violence (TPDV) is a serious public health concern. However, there is limited evidence on the capacity of programs to prevent this form of violence. This study aimed to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs to evaluate the efficacy of prevention programs for TPDV. ⋯ Significant differences in effect sizes were also associated with the type of scale used to assess TPDV. Current evidence suggests that intervention programs for TPDV may be effective, particularly when implemented at multiple levels. Further research focusing on refining tools to assess TPDV is needed.
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
ReviewA systematic review of the evidence on the effect of parental communication about health and health behaviours on children's health and wellbeing.
Parents report feeling unsure how best to talk with their children about sensitive health topics and may avoid such conversations; yet if children have questions or concerns about their health, talking to a parent could enhance their health and wellbeing. We investigated the effects of parental communications about health and health behaviours on children's health and wellbeing, and explored what strategies can encourage parents to communicate about health. We conducted a systematic review and narrative synthesis of research published between January 2008 and April 2020 from five databases. ⋯ No differences in outcomes were found according to child's gender or socio-economic status. Generally, parents were less confident in initiating, rather than continuing, conversations and were more likely to initiate conversations when they felt they had good topic knowledge. While the relatively small, diverse sample limits the strength of these findings, this review provides provisional support for approaches to promote positive parent-child communication about health that are associated with better child health and wellbeing.