Development and validation of a community risk score for sexual and reproductive health in the United States.

Equitable access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care is key to reducing inequities in SRH outcomes. Publicly funded family-planning services are an important source of SRH care for people with social risk factors that impede their access. This study aimed to create a new index (Local Social Inequity in SRH [LSI-SRH]) to measure community-level risk of adverse SRH outcomes based on social determinants of health (SDoH).

Insurance Coverage, Employment Status, and Financial Well-Being of Young Women Diagnosed with Breast Cancer.

Background: The economic cost of breast cancer is a major personal and public health problem in the United States. This study aims to evaluate the insurance, employment, and financial experiences of young female breast cancer survivors and to assess factors associated with financial decline.

Methods: We recruited 830 women under 40 years of age diagnosed with breast cancer between January 2013 and December 2014.

Patient Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Cervical Cancer Prevention in Zambia: Protocol for a Multi-Cohort Discrete Choice Experiment.

Background: Although most countries in southern Africa have cervical cancer screening programs, these programs generally fail to reach a significant majority of women because they are often implemented as pilot or research projects, and this limits their scope and ability to scale up screening. Some countries have planned larger-scale programs, but these have either never been implemented or have not been successfully scaled up. Most of the global burden of cervical cancer is experienced in countries with limited resources, and mortality from cervical cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related deaths among women in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Medicare Expenditures Associated With Hospital and Emergency Department Use Among Beneficiaries With Dementia.

Understanding expenditure patterns for hospital and emergency department (ED) use among individuals with dementia is crucial to controlling Medicare spending. We analyzed Health and Retirement Study data and Medicare claims, stratified by beneficiaries' residence and proximity to death, to estimate Medicare expenditures for all-cause and potentially avoidable hospitalizations and ED visits. Analysis was limited to the Medicare fee-for-service population age 65 and older.

Hospital and ED use among Medicare beneficiaries with dementia varies by setting and proximity to death.

Hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits for people with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders are of particular concern because many of these patients are physically and mentally frail, and the care delivered in these settings is costly. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study linked with Medicare claims from the period 2000-08, we found that among community-dwelling elderly fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries, those who had dementia were significantly more likely than those who did not to have a hospitalization (26.7 percent versus 18.