Medical Faculty and University Hospital Reports Findings in Health Services (A step closer towards achieving universal health coverage: the role of gender in enrolment in health insurance in India): Health and Medicine – Health Services

2024 FEB 08 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Education Daily Report -- New research on Health and Medicine - Health Services is the subject of a report. According to news reporting originating in Heidelberg, Germany, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “There is limited understanding of how universal health coverage (UHC) schemes such as publicly-funded health insurance (PFHI) benefit women as compared to men. Many of these schemes are gender-neutral in design but given the existing gender inequalities in many societies, their benefits may not be similar for women and men.”

Financial support for this research came from Medizinische Fakultat Heidelberg der Universitat Heidelberg.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Medical Faculty and University Hospital, “We contribute to the evidence by conducting a gender analysis of the enrolment of individuals and households in India’s national PFHI scheme, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). We used data from a cross-sectional household survey on RSBY eligible families across eight Indian states and studied different outcome variables at both the individual and household levels to compare enrolment among women and men. We applied multivariate logistic regressions and controlled for several demographic and socio-economic characteristics. At the individual level, the analysis revealed no substantial differences in enrolment between men and women. Only in one state were women more likely to be enrolled in RSBY than men (AOR: 2.66, 95% CI: 1.32-5.38), and this pattern was linked to their status in the household. At the household level, analyses revealed that female-headed households had a higher likelihood to be enrolled (AOR: 1.36, 95% CI: 1.14-1.62), but not necessarily to have all household members enrolled. Findings are surprising in light of India’s well-documented gender bias, permeating different aspects of society, and are most likely an indication of success in designing a policy that did not favour participation by men above women, by mandating spouse enrolment and securing enrolment of up to five family members. Higher enrolment rates among female-headed households are also an indication of women’s preferences for investments in health, in the context of a conducive policy environment. Further analyses are needed to examine if once enrolled, women also make use of the scheme benefits to the same extent as men do.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “India is called upon to capitalise on the achievements of RSBY and apply them to newer schemes such as PM-JAY.”

For more information on this research see: A step closer towards achieving universal health coverage: the role of gender in enrolment in health insurance in India. BMC Health Services Research, 2024;24(1):141. BMC Health Services Research can be contacted at: Bmc, Campus, 4 Crinan St, London N1 9XW, England. (BioMed Central - http://www.biomedcentral.com/; BMC Health Services Research - http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmchealthservres/)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Susanne Ziegler, Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Medical Faculty and University Hospital, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 130.3, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany. Additional authors for this research include Swati Srivastava, Divya Parmar, Sharmishtha Basu, Nishant Jain and Manuela De Allegri.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-10473-z. 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.

The publisher of the journal BMC Health Services Research can be contacted at: Bmc, Campus, 4 Crinan St, London N1 9XW, England.

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