Recorded presentation

David Bott, PhD, David Goodman, MD, MS, and Chiang-hua Chang, MS. Center for Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Dartmouth Medical School, 7251 Strasenburgh Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, 603-650-1958, david.m.bott@dartmouth.edu

Research Objective: Identifying markers that locate vulnerable populations known to have difficulty accessing primary health resources with geographic specificity on a nationwide basis has been a vexing problem in the effort to provide appropriate primary health care resources. Developing data resources that identify vulnerable populations effectively is an important goal in the effort to improve vulnerable populations’ access and utilization of primary health care resources.

Study Design: We used existing national datasets to develop markers indicating the presence of  vulnerable populations within Primary Care Service Areas (PCSA). We compared the populations within marked and unmarked PCSAs across measures of primary care availability and socio-economic characteristics.

Population Studied: Low income school children, public housing residents, homeless, recent immigrants, and low income elderly in the US.

Principal Findings: The US contains 6,542 PCSAs (median population 14,922 per PCSA). We identified  PCSAs containing low income school children, public housing residents, homeless, recent immigrants and low income elderly. Marked versus unmarked PCSAs were significantly different (p<.05) with respect to % minority, median household income, presence of Federally Qualified Health Centers, and primary care physicians per 100,000 population for all populations.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates the feasibility of using the Primary Care Service Areas to identify vulnerable populations and in helping determine those areas that may require further health care resources to secure/improve the health of those populations.

Implications for Policy:  When reasonable national datasets measuring a vulnerable population are available at a zipcode level, identifying these areas is a reasonable task.  The challenge is to develop new quality data resources at a national level for all vulnerable populations.

Learning Objectives:

• • Describe a new method using national datasets for locating vulnerable populations known to have difficulty accessing primary health resources.
  • Evaluate the difficulties of obtaining nationwide data with geographic specificity.
  • List several national datasets used to identify vulnerable populations.
  • Discuss the advantages of using Primary Care Service Areas for relating populations to existing primary care resources.

Keywords: Access to Health Care, Primary Care

Related Web page: pcsa.hrsa.gov/

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

Recorded presentation