Access to Care and Objective Measures of Health: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)

• Activity Number: 579
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 6, 2009 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Health Policy Statistics
• Author(s): Vicki L. Burt*+ and Lester R. Curtin and Clifford Johnson and Cindy Zhang
• Companies: National Center for Health Statistics and CDC and National Center for Health Statistics and Harris Associates
• Keywords: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey ; NHANES

Abstract

The NHANES have been conducted since the 1970s and are unique in that physical examination data are obtained. The 1999--06 NHANES was designed so that estimates of health and nutritional status, risk factors and health conditions could be estimated in age-gender specific domains of the non-Hispanic (NH) black, NH white, Mexican American, and low income populations. NHANES provides the unique opportunity to examine associations between self-reported interview data on health insurance and access to health care and objective physical examination and laboratory data. Therefore, the association of health insurance status and access to health care with undiagnosed conditions, diagnosed conditions and treated conditions can be evaluated. Conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension and other health measures such as environmental chemicals and immunization status will be examined.