Follow-up study of the impact of a rural preventive care outreach program on children's health and use of medical services

Abstract

The present study is a follow-up of a previous evaluation of a rural pediatric preventive care outreach program in Appalachia, which showed that although program participants did not differ substantially from their matched controls on health outcomes, they did have significantly lower utilization rates for outpatient services. The purpose of this second study was to determine whether replication of the original study would yield similar results on a fresh sample of children and whether differences observed between study and control groups would hold firm once families had terminated contact with the program. In general, the findings of the present study provided additional evidence to suggest that program children had lower utilization of outpatient medical services with no appreciable difference from the control children in health outcomes. Lower outpatient utilization rates were also found after termination of contact with the program, but the differences were not statistically significant.