Recent Research from Veterans Affairs Medical Center Highlight Findings in Education (Potential Inequities In Access To In-person Ship Counseling Services): Education

2024 APR 02 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Education Daily Report -- Investigators publish new report on Education. According to news reporting originating in Boston, Massachusetts, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Counseling and education on Medicare coverage options are available through the federal State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP), but little is known about the population that SHIP reaches. Cross-sectional study. Using a novel data source on SHIP counseling site locations, we characterized the availability of in -person SHIP counseling by zip code tabulation area (ZCTA) and used linear regression and t tests to evaluate whether SHIP counseling sites are disproportionately located in higherincome communities.”

Financial supporters for this research include Commonwealth Fund, Arnold Ventures.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Veterans Affairs Medical Center, “Our sample included 1511 SHIP counseling sites. More than half (63%) of the localities in our sample have a SHIP site within the ZCTA or county. Twenty-four percent do not have a SHIP site within the county but have one in an adjacent county. The remaining 13% do not have a nearby SHIP site. There is a disproportionate number of individuals eligible for Medicare in localities without a SHIP site. Moreover, the population living in areas without in -person SHIP sites is more likely to have low income and fewer years of education than the population living in areas with a SHIP site.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “These results suggest that there are areas where in -person SHIP service expansion or other additional navigation support may be warranted.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Potential Inequities In Access To In-person Ship Counseling Services. The American Journal of Managed Care, 2024;30(2). The American Journal of Managed Care can be contacted at: Managed Care & Healthcare Communications Llc, 666 Plainsboro Rd, Ste 300, Plainsboro, NJ 08536, USA.

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Melissa M. Garrido, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Boston, MA, United States. Additional authors for this research include Austin B. Frakt, Allison Dorneo, David Biko, Paul R. Shafer and Michael Adelberg.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.37765/ajmc.2024.89500. 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.

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