Medical Insurance Blog

To study the problem of health services utilization have been proposed different theoretical models 37. Proposed by Andersen & Newman integrates 38 independent variables into three groups, which act by influencing the individual’s behavior during the search for attention of a health service: (a) predisposing variables, which are characteristics that determine a higher probability using services such as sociodemographic variables, beliefs and attitudes about the disease and some family-related issues, such as its structure and number of members, (b) enabling or capacitating variables, which can impede or facilitate use of services, among which are income, medical or dental insurance, geographical accessibility and issues related to the very organization of services, including doctor-patient relationship, and finally, (c) the variables of need , understood as a change in health status. This change can be measured according to the viewpoint of professional (technical assessment or regulation) or as perceived by the individual patient and his family (subjective assessment, or felt / expressed). This theoretical model has been used in studies on dental services in various scenarios 22,23,24,35,39,40,41. Within this model can be studied at the same time the existence of inequalities in health, since it includes socio-economic variables, where if there would be feasible to identify socio-economic inequality.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between various socioeconomic indicators and the use of oral health services, differentiated by type of service used in children aged six to 12 years of age in Navolato, Sinaloa, Mexico.