Social inequalities and health services use: Evidences from a stratified household survey

Abstract

Objective The study aims to identify children who are not benefited by local health programs, looking for to characterize the excluded segment of the population in order to broaden the access to and use of the main actions provided by local health programs. Methods A sample of 465 children aged less than 1 year was studied, living in the year of 1996 in Embu, a city of the metropolitan area of S. Paulo, Brazil. Our hypothesis was that there is a higher availability of private health care resources among families who haven't been using the local health program. The statistical analysis consisted of stratified association analysis to study the heterogeneity between and intra four strata of families defined by different socialeconomic conditions. Results Although only 85.4% of the study children were enrolled in local health services, 91.2% of them were being benefited by main health care actions. The analysis of differences intra strata revealed that our hypothesis was only corroborated in one stratum. It is in the stratum 3, which concentrates the peripheral population, where we could find children who have not been using the local health program in Embu city. Conclusions In the same social segment it was detected some inner heterogeneity among families related to the availability of private resources for their children health care.