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Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China

More than 60 million children in rural China are “left-behind”—both parents live and work far from their rural homes and leave their children behind. This paper explores differences in how left-behind and non-left-behind children seek health remediation in China’s vast but understudied rural areas....

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Autores principales: Guan, Hongyu, Wang, Huan, Huang, Juerong, Du, Kang, Zhao, Jin, Boswell, Matthew, Shi, Yaojiang, Iyer, Mony, Rozelle, Scott
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5981922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29710797
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15050883
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author Guan, Hongyu
Wang, Huan
Huang, Juerong
Du, Kang
Zhao, Jin
Boswell, Matthew
Shi, Yaojiang
Iyer, Mony
Rozelle, Scott
author_facet Guan, Hongyu
Wang, Huan
Huang, Juerong
Du, Kang
Zhao, Jin
Boswell, Matthew
Shi, Yaojiang
Iyer, Mony
Rozelle, Scott
author_sort Guan, Hongyu
collection PubMed
description More than 60 million children in rural China are “left-behind”—both parents live and work far from their rural homes and leave their children behind. This paper explores differences in how left-behind and non-left-behind children seek health remediation in China’s vast but understudied rural areas. This study examines this question in the context of a program to provide vision health care to myopic rural students. The data come from a randomized controlled trial of 13,100 students in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in China. The results show that without a subsidy, uptake of health care services is low, even if individuals are provided with evidence of a potential problem (an eyeglasses prescription). Uptake rises two to three times when this information is paired with a subsidy voucher redeemable for a free pair of prescription eyeglasses. In fact, left-behind children who receive an eyeglasses voucher are not only more likely to redeem it, but also more likely to use the eyeglasses both in the short term and long term. In other words, in terms of uptake of care and compliance with treatment, the voucher program benefitted left-behind students more than non-left-behind students. The results provide a scientific understanding of differential impacts for guiding effective implementation of health policy to all groups in need in developing countries.
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spelling pubmed-59819222018-06-07 Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China Guan, Hongyu Wang, Huan Huang, Juerong Du, Kang Zhao, Jin Boswell, Matthew Shi, Yaojiang Iyer, Mony Rozelle, Scott Int J Environ Res Public Health Article More than 60 million children in rural China are “left-behind”—both parents live and work far from their rural homes and leave their children behind. This paper explores differences in how left-behind and non-left-behind children seek health remediation in China’s vast but understudied rural areas. This study examines this question in the context of a program to provide vision health care to myopic rural students. The data come from a randomized controlled trial of 13,100 students in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in China. The results show that without a subsidy, uptake of health care services is low, even if individuals are provided with evidence of a potential problem (an eyeglasses prescription). Uptake rises two to three times when this information is paired with a subsidy voucher redeemable for a free pair of prescription eyeglasses. In fact, left-behind children who receive an eyeglasses voucher are not only more likely to redeem it, but also more likely to use the eyeglasses both in the short term and long term. In other words, in terms of uptake of care and compliance with treatment, the voucher program benefitted left-behind students more than non-left-behind students. The results provide a scientific understanding of differential impacts for guiding effective implementation of health policy to all groups in need in developing countries. MDPI 2018-04-28 2018-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5981922/ /pubmed/29710797 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15050883 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Guan, Hongyu
Wang, Huan
Huang, Juerong
Du, Kang
Zhao, Jin
Boswell, Matthew
Shi, Yaojiang
Iyer, Mony
Rozelle, Scott
Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China
title Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China
title_full Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China
title_fullStr Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China
title_full_unstemmed Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China
title_short Health Seeking Behavior among Rural Left-Behind Children: Evidence from Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in China
title_sort health seeking behavior among rural left-behind children: evidence from shaanxi and gansu provinces in china
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5981922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29710797
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15050883
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