The Relationship of Demographics to Consumers’ Use of an Extended Range of E-Health Services

E-health usage is often studied at the level of online health portals, which is invaluable in understanding how these important portals are utilized by various health consumers. However, this approach does not provide information about usage of the underlying ehealth services, which is crucial in improving the overall success of e-health portals. In this study, we examine variations in use of 12 distinct e-health services based on five demographic factors: age, gender, race/ethnicity, income, and education. Our results highlight the need for examining usage of distinct e-health services. They also show that demographic factors can play a significant role in how these services are used. Because the results of our study provide a fine-grained picture of e-health usage, they extend those studies and observations that are based on overall use of e-health portals or personal health records. Hence, our results provide important insights for the design, development, and management of specific e-health services, which in turn can improve the overall success of e-health portals

Raising Expectations: A State Scorecard on Long-Term Services and Supports for Older Adults, People With Physical Disabilities, and Family Caregivers

Ranks long-term services and supports systems for affordability and access, choice of setting and provider, quality of life and care, and family caregivers support. Explores contributing factors and roles of public policy and private-sector actions

Increasing Access to Food: A Comprehensive Report on Food Supply Options

Access to food is one of the most important aspects of a healthy, sustainable community. Grocery stores and other suppliers can serve as an economic anchor to provide social benefits to communities. Unfortunately, many communities do not have convenient and/or affordable access to grocery items, particularly fresh produce. As part of Virginia Commonwealth University\u27s Fall 2019 graduate course on Urban Commercial Revitalization, class members researched 13 retail and other food access options, which are described in this report. Each chapter covers a food access option and provides basic information that will be useful to individuals, organizations, or government agencies that wish to attract and/or develop grocery operations in their communities

Debt literacy, financial experiences, and overindebtedness

We analyze a national sample of Americans with respect to their debt literacy, financial experiences, and their judgments about the extent of their indebtedness. Debt literacy is measured by questions testing knowledge of fundamental concepts related to debt and by selfassessed financial knowledge. Financial experiences are the participants’ reported experiences with traditional borrowing, alternative borrowing, and investing activities. Overindebtedness is a self-reported measure. Overall, we find that debt literacy is low: only about one-third of the population seems to comprehend interest compounding or the workings of credit cards. Even after controlling for demographics, we find a strong relationship between debt literacy and both financial experiences and debt loads. Specifically, individuals with lower levels of debt literacy tend to transact in high-cost manners, incurring higher fees and using high-cost borrowing. In applying our results to credit cards, we estimate that as much as one-third of the charges and fees paid by less knowledgeable individuals can be attributed to ignorance. The less knowledgeable also report that their debt loads are excessive or that they are unable to judge their debt position. JEL Classification: D14, D9

The Importance of Transparency and Willingness to Share Personal Information

This study investigates the extent to which individuals are willing to share their sensitive personal information with companies. The study examines whether skepticism can influence willingness to share information. Additionally, it seeks to determine whether transparency can moderate the relationship between skepticism and willingness to share and whether 1) companies perceived motives, 2) individual’s prior privacy violations, 3) individuals’ propensity to take risks, and 4) individuals self-efficacy act as antecedents of skepticism. Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression is used to examine the relationships between all the factors. The findings indicate that skepticism does have a negative impact on willingness to share personal information and that transparency can reduce skepticis

Managed Care

By 1993, over 70% of all Americans with health insurance were enrolled in some form of managed care plan. The term managed care encompasses a diverse array of institutional arrangements, which combine various sets of mechanisms, that, in turn, have changed over time. The chapter reviews these mechanims, which, in addition to the methods employed by traditional insurance plans, include the selection and organization of providers, the choice of payment methods (including capitation and salary payment), and the monitoring of service utilization. Managed care has a long history. For an extended period, this form of organization was discouraged by a hostile regulatory environment. Since the early 1980s, however, managed care has grown dramatically. Neither theoretical nor empirical research have yet provided an explanation for this pattern of growth. The growth of managed care may be due to this organizational form's relative success in responding to underlying market failures in the health care system - asymmetric information about health risks, moral hazard, limited information on quality, and limited industry competitiveness. The chapter next explores managed care's response to each of these problems. The chapter then turns to empirical research on managed care. Managed care plans appear to attract a population that is somewhat lower cost than that enrolled in conventional insurance. This complicates analysis of the effect of managed care on utilization. Nonetheless, many studies suggest that managed care plans reduce the rate of health care utilization somewhat. Less evidence exists on their effect on overall health care costs and cost growth.

Gauging Portuguese community pharmacy users' perceptions

Objective: To assess perceptions related to facets of community pharmacy usage within the Portuguese general population. Methods: An ONSA (The Governmental Public Health Observatory) instrument was used, the ECOS (Em Casa Observamos Saúde) sample. This consisted of a national representative sample of household units with telephone. General demographics and pharmacy users’ perceptions related to five facets of community pharmacy usage were collected by telephone interviews. Main Results: Almost one-third (31.9%) of the participants were probable chronic drug users, hence in regular contact with the community pharmacy. Thirty-four percent preferred not to talk with the person who dispenses their prescribed drugs. Most users (47.6%) expressed opinions of pharmacists as being health care rather than business oriented, although one quarter of the sample was not sure. A large majority (73.7%) would like pharmacists to participate in their treatment decisions, but 55.1% did not seem able to distinguish between pharmacists and non-pharmacist technical staff, working at the pharmacy counter. Most significant predictors of users’ dichotomous perceptions related to the usage facets surveyed were age, education and occupation. Being older, less literate and economically inactive increased the odds of inappropriate users’ perceptions of the pharmacists. Conclusions: Results showed that erroneous concepts and behaviours exist within the Portuguese population in relation to the community pharmacists’ role. This is a matter for pharmacy professional and educational bodies to take into account when developing intervention strategies, in particular when communicating with the general public