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Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique
Low-income countries are plagued by a high burden of preventable and curable disease as well as unmet need for healthcare, but detailed microeconomic evidence on the relationship between supply-side factors and service use is limited. Causality has rarely been assessed due to the challenges posed by...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4556719/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26329425 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-015-0062-6 |
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author | Anselmi, Laura Lagarde, Mylène Hanson, Kara |
author_facet | Anselmi, Laura Lagarde, Mylène Hanson, Kara |
author_sort | Anselmi, Laura |
collection | PubMed |
description | Low-income countries are plagued by a high burden of preventable and curable disease as well as unmet need for healthcare, but detailed microeconomic evidence on the relationship between supply-side factors and service use is limited. Causality has rarely been assessed due to the challenges posed by the endogeneity of health service supply. In this study, using data from Mozambique, we investigate the effect of healthcare service availability, measured as the type of health facilities and their level of staffing and equipment, on the individual decision to seek care. We apply an instrumental variable approach to test for causality in the effect of staff and equipment availability on the decision to seek care and we explore heterogeneous effects based on the distance of households to the closest health facility. We find that living in the proximity of a health facility increases the probability of seeking care. A greater availability of referral health services in the locality has no significant effect on decision to seek care, while greater availability of staff and equipment increases the probability of seeking care when ill. Demand side barriers to health care use exist, but have a smaller impact when health care services are available within one hour walking distance. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4556719 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45567192015-09-10 Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique Anselmi, Laura Lagarde, Mylène Hanson, Kara Health Econ Rev Research Article Low-income countries are plagued by a high burden of preventable and curable disease as well as unmet need for healthcare, but detailed microeconomic evidence on the relationship between supply-side factors and service use is limited. Causality has rarely been assessed due to the challenges posed by the endogeneity of health service supply. In this study, using data from Mozambique, we investigate the effect of healthcare service availability, measured as the type of health facilities and their level of staffing and equipment, on the individual decision to seek care. We apply an instrumental variable approach to test for causality in the effect of staff and equipment availability on the decision to seek care and we explore heterogeneous effects based on the distance of households to the closest health facility. We find that living in the proximity of a health facility increases the probability of seeking care. A greater availability of referral health services in the locality has no significant effect on decision to seek care, while greater availability of staff and equipment increases the probability of seeking care when ill. Demand side barriers to health care use exist, but have a smaller impact when health care services are available within one hour walking distance. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2015-09-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4556719/ /pubmed/26329425 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-015-0062-6 Text en © Anselmi et al. 2015 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Anselmi, Laura Lagarde, Mylène Hanson, Kara Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique |
title | Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique |
title_full | Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique |
title_fullStr | Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique |
title_full_unstemmed | Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique |
title_short | Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique |
title_sort | health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from mozambique |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4556719/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26329425 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-015-0062-6 |
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