Parents' Health and Demographic Characteristics Predict Noncompliance with Well-Child Visits

Abstract

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate factors related to well-child visit noncompliance in an ethnically diverse family practice clinic population.Methods: Participants included 146 parents (131 mothers and 15 fathers) of children aged 0 to 24 months who received care at a St. Paul residency clinic. Participants completed telephone surveys that asked about their demographic characteristics, attitudes toward well-child visits, whether the most recent planned well-child visit had been kept, and their own and their child's health characteristics.Results: All participants thought that well-child visits were important, with immunizations being the highest rated reason for importance. Fourteen percent of parents said they had missed a recent wellchild visit, mostly because they forgot. More than three fourths of parents believed visit reminders were helpful, and the preferred type of reminder was a telephone call. Noncompliance with well-child visits was associated with the parent's depressive symptoms, transportation difficulties, working at a job, having private (vs public) health insurance, and being older (vs younger).Conclusions

Prevention counseling among pediatric patients presenting with unintentional injuries to physicians' offices' in the United States

“…Thus, different strategies and tactics should be implemented based on different behaviors. Evidence-based prevention practices specific to injuries exist and research indicates that parents respond positively to health education in general (Jhanjee et al, 2004). However, utilization among physicians is low and this should be further investigated in future studies.…”

Caregiver Psychological Distress as a Barrier to Influenza Vaccination Among Community-Dwelling Elderly With Dementia

“…For example, asthmatic children with mothers with poor psychologic adjustment were more likely to miss asthma medication, 35 and greater parental depressive symptoms is associated with decreased compliance to well-child visits. 36 In their paper, DiMatteo et al 17 proposed 3 possible mechanisms by which depression may interfere with adherence: (1) increased feelings of hopelessness common in depression may make action seem less worthwhile, (2) increased social isolation associated with depression decreases both support for adherent behavior and information flow about medical recommendations to the depressed person, and (3) depression may reduce cognitive functioning, which is necessary for remembering and carrying out recommendations. To develop effective interventions to counter the negative effects of caregiver depression on care-recipient influenza vaccination, future research should rigorously examine the relative contribution of these pathways.…”

Postpartum Depression Screening at Well-Child Visits: Validity of a 2-Question Screen and the PHQ-9

“…Perhaps of even greater concern, though, is the risk of missing postpartum depression in women who do not bring their child in for well-child visits, as prior research has shown a relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and noncompliance with well-child visits. 32 Although only 38% of the 2-to 6-month follow-up questionnaires were completed during well-child visits, the percentage was higher (46%) for questionnaires completed before August 1, 2006, when family medicine patient records were still on paper charts instead of electronic ones. Conversion to an electronic record made it impossible to physically prepare charts with screening forms before the visit.…”