Achieving Health Equity in Preventive Services: Systematic Evidence Review

Publication Year: 2018
Demographic Group: Racial and ethnic minority groups
Study Design: Review
Type of Literature: Grey
Abstract

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Insights Results

Overview of article

  • The purpose of this systematic evidence review (SER) is to summarize the state of the evidence on achieving health equity in preventive services by identifying the effects of impediments and barriers that can create disparities in prevention services, and the effectiveness of strategies and interventions to reduce health disparities in preventive services
  • Achieving health equity in prevention is particularly challenging because: 1) Nearly everyone in the population is eligible for prevention services, and, consequently, disparities can occur across multiple sociodemographic dimensions as defined by Healthy People 2020; and 2) The effectiveness of prevention relies on specific clinical pathways of services, which create multiple opportunities for disadvantaged groups to “fall through the cracks.” As a result, the scope and complexity of this topic is immense, and can be imagined as the large number of sociodemographic dimensions across which disparities might exist, multiplied by the number of preventive services considered

Key takeaways/implications

  • Overall, this research protocol highlights that effective implementation of prevention services at the health system level is dependent upon additional influences that vary across healthcare organizations