Although community health centers (CHCs) provide primary health services to the medically underserved and poor, limited access to off-site specialty services may lead to poorer outcomes among underinsured CHC patients. This study evaluates access to specialty health services for patients receiving care in CHCs, using a survey of medical directors of all federally qualified CHCs in the United States in 2004. Respondents reported that uninsured patients had greater difficulty obtaining access to off-site specialty services, including referrals and diagnostic testing, than did patients with Medicaid, Medicare, or private insurance.

Background Heart failure (HF) is an important public health concern particularly among persons over 65 years of age. Women and African Americans are critically understudied populations that carry a sizeable portion of the HF burden. Limited normative and prognostic data exist regarding measures of cardiac structure, diastolic function, and novel measures of systolic deformation in older adults living in the community. Methods and Results The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study is a large, predominantly biracial NHLBI-sponsored epidemiologic cohort study. Between 2011 and 2013, approximately 6,000 surviving participants, now in their seventh to ninth decade of life, are expected to return for a 5th study visit during which comprehensive 2D, Doppler, tissue Doppler, and speckle-tracking echocardiography will be performed uniformly in all cohort clinic visit participants. The following objectives will be addressed: (1) to characterize cardiac structural and functional abnormalities among the elderly and determine how these differ by gender and race/ethnicity, (2) determine the relationship between ventricular and vascular abnormalities, and (3) prospectively examine the extent to which these non-invasive measures associate with incident HF. Conclusions We describe the design, imaging acquisition and analysis methods, and quality assurance metrics for echocardiography in Visit 5 of the ARIC cohort. A better understanding of the differences in cardiac structure and function through the spectrum of HF stages in the elderly generally, and between genders and racial/ethnic groups specifically, will deepen our understanding of the pathophysiology driving HF progression in these at-risk populations and may inform novel prevention or therapeutic strategies.