News from the FDA/CDC

Contacts with health care professionals increased among adults


 

FROM MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY WEEKLY REPORT

Adults aged 18-64 years were more likely to see or talk to a health care professional in 2017-2018 than they were in 2012-2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Contact with a health care professional in the past 12 months

The percentage of American adults who had seen or talked to a health care professional in the past 12 months rose from 79.3% in 2012-2013 to 82.1% in 2017-2018, Michael E. Martinez, MPH, and Tainya C. Clarke, PhD, reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Analysis by race/ethnicity showed that Hispanic adults were still the least likely to have seen or talked to a health care professional in 2017-2018, even though they had the largest increase – more than six percentage points – between the two time periods, the CDC investigators reported.

White adults were the most likely to have seen or talked to a health care provider in both 2012-2013 and 2017-2018 but their 2.1-percentage-point increase over the course of the analysis was the smallest of the four groups included, based on data from the National Health Interview Survey.

SOURCE: Martinez ME, Clarke TC. MMWR. 2019 Dec 6;68(48):1124.

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