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Psychological and neighborhood factors associated with urban women’s preventive care use

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Abstract

Women are more likely than men to forego care—including preventive care. Understanding which factors influence women’s preventive care use has the potential to improve health. This study focuses on the largely understudied areas of psychological barriers (depression) and neighborhood factors (support and stressors) that may be associated with women’s preventive care use through secondary analysis of the Chicago Community Adult Health Study. Across models, 30–40% of the variance in preventive care adherence was explained by the neighborhood. Depressive symptoms were not associated with preventive care use when neighborhood factors were included. However, stratified models showed that associations varied by race/ethnicity. Previous research has tended to focus on individual determinants of care, but this study suggests that barriers to care are far more complex. Efforts aimed at improving care utilization need to be multipronged and interventions need to take an individual’s demographics, mental health, and context into account.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Stacie Geller, Arden Handler, Dan Cervone, Abby Koch, Kris Zimmermann, Leslie Carnahan, Evelyn Behar, Yamile Molina, Pamela Roesch, Veronica Arreola, Alisa Velonis, Maichou Lor, Billy Caceres, Dawon Baik, Kristine Kulage, Kathleen Ackerman, and Caroline Handschuh for their comments on earlier drafts. This work was supported by the Alice J. Dan Dissertation Award from the University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Research on Women and Gender (CRWG). Dr. Veldhuis’ preparation of this paper was supported by an NIH/NIAAA Ruth Kirschstein Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (F32AA025816; PI C. Veldhuis).

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Correspondence to Cindy B. Veldhuis.

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Conflict of interest

Cindy B. Veldhuis, Pauline Maki, Kristine Molina these authors have declare they have no conflict of interest.

Human and animal rights and Informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Ethical approval

Data for this study came from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. As data were deidentified and this study was solely a secondary analysis of data, the study was exempt from IRB review.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Demographics of study participants by race/ethnicity and overall

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Veldhuis, C.B., Maki, P. & Molina, K. Psychological and neighborhood factors associated with urban women’s preventive care use. J Behav Med 43, 346–364 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00122-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00122-4

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