American journal of preventive medicine
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To encourage greater utilization of preventive services among Medicare beneficiaries, the 2010 Affordable Care Act waived coinsurance for the Welcome to Medicare visit, making this benefit free starting in 2011. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of the Affordable Care Act on Welcome to Medicare visit utilization. ⋯ The Affordable Care Act, and perhaps the removal of cost sharing, was associated with increased use of the Welcome to Medicare visit; however, even with the increased use, there is room for improvement.
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The current study aims to characterize weight-change trajectories and their concomitant associations with prospectively measured dieting and other disordered eating behaviors among initially nonoverweight adolescents during the transition to adulthood. ⋯ Although adolescents who are already overweight are most frequently targeted for weight-gain prevention and early intervention programs, results suggest that healthy lifestyle interventions could also benefit individuals who may be perceived as low risk for overweight in adulthood by nature of being nonoverweight in adolescence. Dieting and unhealthy weight-control behaviors tended to be associated with weight gain, suggesting that they are ineffective in addition to being potentially harmful.
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Health insurance coverage is linked to clinical preventive service use. This study examined cancer screenings among U.S. adults by health insurance status. ⋯ Disparities in cancer screenings by health insurance status and type of insurance exist among U.S. adults. Greater efforts to increase screening rates and to reduce disparities in cancer screenings are an important strategy to help improve overall population health.
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Recommendations for prostate-specific antigen-based screening for prostate cancer are placing increasing emphasis on men aged 55-69 years. The goal of the current study is to describe patterns of population-based prostate-specific antigen testing with details about that age group. ⋯ Despite decreases, the absolute change in prostate-specific antigen testing for men aged 55-69 years was small (9.3%) over the study period. Men aged ≥70 years, for whom the benefits are unlikely to exceed the harms, continue to have consistently high testing prevalence.