Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/21209
Appears in Collections:Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: What do we know about who does and does not attend general health checks? Findings from a narrative scoping review
Author(s): Dryden, Ruth
Williams, Brian
McCowan, Colin
Themessl-Huber, Markus
Contact Email: brian.williams@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Health checks
Screening
Public health
Inequalities
Primary care
Issue Date: Aug-2012
Date Deposited: 5-Nov-2014
Citation: Dryden R, Williams B, McCowan C & Themessl-Huber M (2012) What do we know about who does and does not attend general health checks? Findings from a narrative scoping review. BMC Public Health, 12, Art. No.: 723. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-723
Abstract: Background: General and preventive health checks are a key feature of contemporary policies of anticipatory care. Ensuring high and equitable uptake of such general health checks is essential to ensuring health gain and preventing health inequalities. This literature review explores the socio-demographic, clinical and social cognitive characteristics of those who do and do not engage with general health checks or preventive health checks for cardiovascular disease. Methods: An exploratory scoping study approach was employed. Databases searched included the British Nursing Index and Archive, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) and Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Titles and abstracts of 17463 papers were screened; 1171 papers were then independently assessed by two researchers. A review of full text was carried out by two of the authors resulting in 39 being included in the final review. Results: Those least likely to attend health checks were men on low incomes, low socio-economic status, unemployed or less well educated. In general, attenders were older than non-attenders. An individual's marital status was found to affect attendance rates with non-attenders more likely to be single. In general, white individuals were more likely to engage with services than individuals from other ethnic backgrounds. Non-attenders had a greater proportion of cardiovascular risk factors than attenders, and smokers were less likely to attend than non-smokers. The relationship between health beliefs and health behaviours appeared complex. Non-attenders were shown to value health less strongly, have low self-efficacy, feel less in control of their health and be less likely to believe in the efficacy of health checks. Conclusion: Routine health check-ups appear to be taken up inequitably, with gender, age, socio-demographic status and ethnicity all associated with differential service use. Furthermore, non-attenders appeared to have greater clinical need or risk factors suggesting that differential uptake may lead to sub-optimal health gain and contribute to inequalities via the inverse care law. Appropriate service redesign and interventions to encourage increased uptake among these groups is required.
DOI Link: 10.1186/1471-2458-12-723
Rights: © 2012 Dryden et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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