Data from University of Toronto Provide New Insights into Health Insurance (Housing Instability and Children’s Health Insurance Gaps)

Managed Care Weekly Digest

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- A new study on Health Insurance is now available. According to news reporting from Toronto, Canada, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "To assess the extent to which housing instability is associated with gaps in health insurance coverage of preschool age children. Secondary analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort, a nationally representative study of children born in the United States in 2001, was conducted to investigate associations between unstable housing homelessness, multiple moves, or living with others and not paying rent and children's subsequent health insurance gaps."

Financial support for this research came from Child Health Institute of New Jersey (see also Health Insurance).

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from the University of Toronto, "Logistic regression was used to adjust for potentially confounding factors. Ten percent of children were unstably housed at age 2, and 11% had a gap in health insurance between ages 2 and 4. Unstably housed children were more likely to have gaps in insurance compared to stably housed children (16% vs 10%). Controlling for potentially confounding factors, the odds of a child insurance gap were significantly higher in unstably housed families than in stably housed families (adjusted odds ratio 1.27; 95% confidence interval 1.01-1.61). The association was similar in alternative model specifications. In a US nationally representative birth cohort, children who were unstably housed at age 2 were at higher risk, compared to their stably housed counterparts, of experiencing health insurance gaps between ages 2 and 4 years."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "The findings from this study suggest that policy efforts to delink health insurance renewal processes from mailing addresses, and potentially routine screenings for housing instability as well as referrals to appropriate resources by pediatricians, would help unstably housed children maintain health insurance."

For more information on this research see: Housing Instability and Children's Health Insurance Gaps. Academic Pediatrics, 2017;17(7):732-738. Academic Pediatrics can be contacted at: Elsevier Science Inc, 360 Park Ave South, New York, NY 10010-1710, USA. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Academic Pediatrics - www.journals.elsevier.com/academic-pediatrics/)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting N.E. Reichman, University of Toronto, Dalla Lana Sch Public Hlth, Inst Hlth Policy Management & Evaluat, Toronto, ON, Canada. Additional authors for this research include H. Corman, M.A. Curtis, K. Noonan and A. Carroll.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2017.02.007. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Keywords for this news article include: Toronto, Ontario, Canada, North and Central America, Health Insurance, University of Toronto.