gms | German Medical Science

Background and status of (inter)national research: Regular pediatric consultations in primary health care are important to detect physical, psychological, cognitive, and motoric problems and development disorders in children. One immediate effect on children, who lack adequate preventive care, are unplanned hospital admissions (Cecil et a.l 2018). In addition, untreated health problems in childhood may have long lasting negative effects in adulthood. The Swiss society of pediatricians recommends 15 preventive health screenings from birth until the age of 14, with more frequent screenings in the first two years of life. Eight of these screenings are done on the parents’ initiative and reimbursed by the compulsory health insurance. Further three are mandatory school health screenings. International literature shows that the uptake of recommended preventive care is lower and not complete among some population groups and progressively declines with age (Schmidke et al. 2018 & Wood et al. 2012).

Question and objective: The current data and knowledge about frequency of pediatric consultations, health status and associated factors among children and adolescents remains limited in Switzerland. The aim of our study is to shed light on this knowledge gap by addressing the following research questions using two different data sources:

1.

Are there differences in health status between socioeconomic groups of school-aged children and adolescents?

2.

Are there children between 0 and 6 years with fewer than recommended pediatric consultations, and are there differences between socioeconomic groups in this regard?

Method or hypothesis:

1.

To investigate differences in health status, we use data of children between 4 and 14-years from the school medical services in a big Swiss city and compare health status indicators between subgroups.

2.

To investigate frequency of pediatric consultations, we draw claims data from children between 0 and 6 years from a large Swiss health insurer from 2012 to 2019 and analyze differences between subgroups.

For both analyses we expect to find differences between socioeconomic groups such as children from native vs. from non-native parents, as well as regional differences.

Results: This is a still ongoing project and final results will be available for the conference.

Discussion: This study provides insight into the frequency and potential under-use of pediatric health consultations, what the health status of school-aged children are and if there are systematic differences between subgroups.

Practical implications: Identifying differences in primary care consultations and health status at an early age could be key for establishing measures to improve the integration of vulnerable groups in the Swiss health care system.

Appeal for practice (science and/or care) in one sentence: Identifying health differences and barriers to health care in early life might help to reduce life-long health inequalities.