The effect of information in the utilization of preventive health‐care strategies: An application to breast cancer

Julia Witt

Health Economics, 2008, vol. 17, issue 6, 721-731

Abstract: This paper investigates the net benefit of mammography. A theoretical expected utility (EU) model shows that increases in breast cancer risk, decreases in false‐negative and false‐positive rates, decreases in cost and increases/decreases in quality of life with early/late‐stage breast cancer increase the net benefit of mammography. The theoretical findings are tested in an empirical analysis using Canadian data. The empirical results are broadly consistent with the EU hypothesis. Results suggest that women at higher risk are more likely to obtain a mammogram. In particular, individuals are significantly more likely to have had a time‐appropriate mammogram if the mother's cause of death was breast cancer, and if the sister had breast cancer. The results also show that older age (related to higher risk and more accurate mammograms) increases mammography use, and that decreases in time and opportunity costs, and better health behaviours generally have the same effect. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.1294

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:17:y:2008:i:6:p:721-731

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().