Health care resource utilization and costs of California Medicaid patients with schizophrenia treated with paliperidone palmitate once monthly or atypical oral antipsychotic treatment

Objective: To compare all-cause health care utilization and costs between patients with schizophrenia treated with once monthly paliperidone palmitate (PP1M; Invega Sustenna1) and atypical oral antipsychotic therapy (OAT). Methods: This was a retrospective claims-based analysis among adult California Medicaid (Medi-Cal) patients with schizophrenia having 2 claims for PP1M or OAT from 1 July 2009 to 31 December 2013 and continuous health plan enrollment for 1 year pre- and post-index date (PP1M or OAT initiation date). Baseline characteristics were reported descriptively. Propensity score matching with a 1:1 greedy match method was used to create two matched cohorts. Treatment patterns, all-cause health care utilization, and costs for the 12 month follow-up period were compared between the two matched cohorts. Results: Two well matched cohorts of 722 patients were produced with similar baseline characteristics. During the 12 month follow-up period, PP1M patients were significantly less likely to discontinue treatment (30.6% vs. 39.5%, p Conclusions: Patients with schizophrenia treated with PP1M had significantly fewer inpatient hospitalizations and associated costs with no significant difference in the total costs between the two cohorts. This study is subject to limitations associated with claims data such as miscoding, inability to examine clinical severity, etc

Bodyweight Perceptions among Texas Women: The Effects of Religion, Race/Ethnicity, and Citizenship Status

Despite previous work exploring linkages between religious participation and health, little research has looked at the role of religion in affecting bodyweight perceptions. Using the theoretical model developed by Levin et al. (Sociol Q 36(1):157–173, 1995) on the multidimensionality of religious participation, we develop several hypotheses and test them by using data from the 2004 Survey of Texas Adults. We estimate multinomial logistic regression models to determine the relative risk of women perceiving themselves as overweight. Results indicate that religious attendance lowers risk of women perceiving themselves as very overweight. Citizenship status was an important factor for Latinas, with noncitizens being less likely to see themselves as overweight. We also test interaction effects between religion and race. Religious attendance and prayer have a moderating effect among Latina non-citizens so that among these women, attendance and prayer intensify perceptions of feeling less overweight when compared to their white counterparts. Among African American women, the effect of increased church attendance leads to perceptions of being overweight. Prayer is also a correlate of overweight perceptions but only among African American women. We close with a discussion that highlights key implications from our findings, note study limitations, and several promising avenues for future research