Preventive Health Services: A Review of Literature

Preventive health services involve an array of health care services. Specific services, such as mammograms, clinical breast examinations and pap smears are common services that are quite often the focus of research. These services, if provided on the recommended schedules, have been known to decrease the mortality and morbidity rates of the sicknesses and diseases they detect or prevent.

In the process of studying preventive health services, a number of researchers have attempted to identify the factors which prevent women aged 40 to 64 from receiving these services (Bindman, Grumbach, Osmond, Vranizan & Stewart, 1996; Calle, Flanders, Thun & Martin, 1993; Calnan, 1985; Hayward, Shapiro, Freeman & Corey, 1988).

In some instances, a factor has been isolated and individually examined as to its effect on obtaining preventive health services, while in others, factors have not necessarily been studied and reported as independent variables. Further, some factors have not been analyzed against obtaining preventive services specifically, or in terms of women or female Veterans only, but the results enable strong implications to be drawn as to the more narrow factor at issue.

Characteristics of Health Delivery System

The term "delivery system" is used to refer more specifically to those arrangements for the potential rendering of care to consumers (Aday & Andersen, 1975). The delivery system is characteri

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s level, in general, accounted for most of the explained variance in the utilization of five health services: hospitals, physicians, dentists, home care and ambulatory care (Branch, Jette, Evashwick, Polansky, Rowe & Diehr, 1981). While the age sample in that study is older than the subject age of this study, the results in Branch, et al (1981) would tend to support a conclusion that older females who avoid preventive services do so because of a lack of perceived need on their part or because they are not told otherwise by their medical care delivery system. Although the focus of another study was to determine how race affects health services use by older women, relevant information was reported in reference to physical health as a predictor of the need for and use of health services in general (Gale & Erickson, 1997). In that study, the relationships among functional health and its correlates in a sample of 101 low-income, older African American (N=32), white (N=37) and Hispanic (N=32) women residing in the southwestern United States was examined. Statistically significant associations were found among age, education and income and the functional health variables of physical health, independent health and psychosocial healt

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