Published in Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.)
To assess the relationship between poverty and pain-related interference. Data on a sample of 108,259 adults aged 18 and older from the Household Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) from 2013 to 2017 were analyzed. I assess the odds of reporting any pain-related interference, as well as increasing levels of pain-related interfe...
Published in BMC Health Services Research
BackgroundUnderutilization of health services among chronic non-communicable disease sufferers, especially for hypertension (HBP) and diabetes mellitus (DM), was considered as a significant contributing factor to substantial cases in terms of both avoidable morbidity and mortality. However, evidence on health services underutilization and its assoc...
Published in BMC Medical Ethics
BackgroundPoverty and social deprivation have adverse effects on health outcomes and place a significant burden on healthcare systems. There are some actions that can be taken to tackle them from within healthcare institutions, but clinicians who seek to make frontline services more responsive to the social determinants of health and the social con...
Published in Demography
Several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya, have introduced free/subsidized secondary education. This paper examines the role of these free/subsidized education policies on teenage motherhood. To identify the causal effect, I exploit the timing of a national reform in Kenya that eliminated/subsidized secondary school fees using a diff...
Published in BMC Health Services Research
BackgroundOut of pocket (OOP) payments for health are significant health financing challenges in Afghanistan as it is a source of incurrence of catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) and impoverishment. Measuring and understanding the drivers and impacts of this financial health hardship is an economic and public health priority, particularly in the...
We estimated the prevalence of social determinants of health (SDH, food insecurity and social support) in adults with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in the United States and evaluated associations with financial toxicity and healthcare use. In the National Health Interview Survey 2015, we identified adults with IBD and estimated the prevalence o...
Published in AIDS and behavior
This study describes a sample of HIV+ young transgender women of color aged 18-24 and their experience with homelessness as part of a demonstration project of engagement and retention in HIV medical care funded by Health Resources and Services Administration. The study engaged transgender women of color in HIV care in nine sites across the US betwe...
Published in BMC Public Health
BackgroundThere is a lack of nationwide studies on critically ill patients’ health disparity under the National Health Insurance (NHI) system. We evaluated health disparities in intensive care unit (ICU) admission, outcomes, and readmission in impoverished children.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective cohort study using a national database from the ...
Published in Systematic Reviews
BackgroundMany studies have evaluated the effects that a lack of resources has in children’s physical and cognitive development. Although there are reviews that have focused on applied interventions from different perspectives, there is still a need for a comprehensive review of what has been attempted with these children from the cognitive interve...
Published in International Journal for Equity in Health
BackgroundMaintaining oral health is one of the global public health challenges. Income and out-of-pocket payments for dental care services are predictors of dental care utilisation. Although public assistance programmes guarantee income security for impoverished people, access barriers other than financial costs may cause unmet dental care needs. ...
