Impact of Health Care and Socioeconomic Needs on Health Care Utilization and Disease Management: The University of New Mexico Hospital Care One Program.

Understanding how unmet basic needs impact health care in patients with complex conditions is vital to improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs. The purpose of this observational study was to explore the association between health care and socioeconomic needs and health care utilization and disease management among patients with chronic conditions at an intensive, patient-centered, office-based program. The study used a cross-sectional design and a convenience sampling approach.

Obesity and malnutrition among Hispanic children in the United States: double burden on health inequities.

Objective: To examine important micronutrient deficiencies related to child health and growth outcomes for all weight statuses to 1) better understand other potential nutritional problems and inequities that may be masked by focusing solely on BMI percentiles and overweight/obesity, and 2) draw attention to the need for more studies focused on the nutritional well-being of children at all weight statuses, including healthy weight.

Methods: A sample of children (ages 2-19 years) old from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2010 was analyzed. Prevalence of stunting, folate, vitamin D, iron, iodine, and anemia, was considered.

Chronic malnutrition among overweight Hispanic children: understanding health disparities.

Obesity may be masking other health problems such as height deficit, or stunting. Stunting may reflect the cumulative effect of chronic malnutrition especially in underserved immigrant communities. Exploratory analysis of a sample of children 2-19 years old from the 2007-2008 NHANES was used to assess the relationship between chronic malnutrition and overweight/obesity in Hispanic children.

The creation of the health consumer: challenges on health sector regulation after managed care era.

Background: We utilized our previous studies analyzing the reforms affecting the health sector developed in the 1990s by financial groups to frame the strategies implemented by the pharmaceutical industry to regain market positions and to understand the challenges that regulatory agencies are confronting.

Methods: We followed an analytical approach for analyzing the process generated by the disputes between the financial groups and the pharmaceutical corporations and the challenges created to governmental regulation. We analyzed primary and secondary sources using situational and discourse analyses.

[Financial capital versus medical-industrial complex: challenges for the regulatory agencies].

This article presents the structural processes that consolidated under the hegemony of the financial capital in the 90s; the dispute between the financial capital operating in the health sector and the medical-industrial complex; the strategies used by the medical-industrial complex for regaining positions; and the challenges all these processes pose for the regulatory agencies. The problems the regulatory agencies are facing lie in two central processes: 1) the hegemony the financial capital reached in the 90s in the health sector through reforms aimed at deregulating the sector in order to facilitate its entrance; and 2) the repositioning of the medical-industrial complex since the mid 90s by radicalizing medicalization. This article is based on several studies conducted by the author using qualitative methods and quantitative secondary data for understanding the historical-situational context.

Privatization of health services in less developed countries: an empirical response to the proposals of the World Bank and Wharton School.

Academics and World Bank officials argue that, by reducing out-of-pocket expenditures, expanded private insurance may improve access to needed health services in less developed countries. In this empirical response, the authors examine this recommendation through observations from their research on privatization of health services in the United States, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Privatization, either through conversion of public sector to private sector insurance or by expansion of private insurance through enhanced participation by corporate entrepreneurs, generally has not succeeded in improving access to health services for vulnerable groups.

Argentina: no lesson learned.

This article examines the political, ideological, social, and economic processes by which the Argentinean economy was transformed, the structural consequences, and the policies responsible for dismantling the welfare state. The health care system reform during the 1990s was an important component in accomplishing the last objective. Analyses of the policies adopted after the crisis of 2001 reveal that, despite the discourse against international financial institutions, President Nestor Kirchner, elected in 2002, followed the same approach by accepting and applying the second generation of health reforms recommended by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank with additional pressure from the World Trade Organization and several free trade agreements.

The Latin American Social Medicine database.

Background: Public health practitioners and researchers for many years have been attempting to understand more clearly the links between social conditions and the health of populations. Until recently, most public health professionals in English-speaking countries were unaware that their colleagues in Latin America had developed an entire field of inquiry and practice devoted to making these links more clearly understood. The Latin American Social Medicine (LASM) database finally bridges this previous gap.

Increasing access to Latin American social medicine resources: a preliminary report.

Purpose: This preliminary report describes the development and implementation of a project to improve access to literature in Latin American social medicine (LASM).

Methods: The University of New Mexico project team collaborated with participants from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador to identify approximately 400 articles and books in Latin American social medicine. Structured abstracts were prepared, translated into English, Spanish, and Portuguese, assigned Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), and loaded into a Web-based database for public searching.

[Latin American social medicine: contributions and challenges].

This piece presents and analyzes a number of issues related to social medicine: the context of the emergence of social medicine; the differences between social medicine and public health; the theories, methods, and debates in social medicine; the main subjects or problems considered in social medicine; and the difficulties of disseminating the concepts of social medicine among English-speaking persons and among medical and public health professionals in general. Latin American social medicine has challenged other views by contributing to an understanding of the determinants of the health-disease-health care process and by using theories, methods, and techniques that are little known in the field of public health. Introducing Latin American social medicine, especially among English speakers, will be difficult due to the conceptual complexity of this field for persons who are accustomed to the theoretical framework of public health and medicine and also due to skepticism concerning research coming from the Third World.