Role of Medical Insurance in Reducing Place‐based Health Disparities: Functional Disability in Rural Appalachia

Julie Hicks Patrick, Carly E. Pullen, Kareem Ibrahim‐Bacha and S. Mindi Spencer

Journal of Elder Policy, 2022, vol. 2, issue 2, 167-190

Abstract: Rural Appalachia, including the entire state of West Virginia, is characterized by high health disparities. Such place‐based health disparities contribute to disability across the lifespan and may exacerbate morbidity and disability in late life. Thus, examinations of the contributors to morbidity and disability at mid‐and late‐life are needed to inform policies and programs. Using the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), we examine some of the social determinants of health (e.g., age, gender, education, income) as predictors of access to health care and functional ability among 4,867 adults living in West Virginia. Access to health care was indexed by three variables, including whether one had financial barriers to medical care, the number of personal medical care professionals one saw, and the recency of wellness exams. Functional ability was indexed using items assessing difficulty with dressing, climbing stairs, and doing errands. The model fit the data well for the entire sample, X2 (DF = 29, N = 4867) = 411.30, p

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.18278/jep.2.2.6

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:eldpol:v:2:y:2022:i:2:p:167-190

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Elder Policy from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().