Patterns and trends in local health departments’ efforts to promote access to care in local communities throughout the United States: The contributions of governance structures

Abstract

Public health agencies like local health departments (LHDs) play an important role in addressing healthcare access disparities and service delivery gaps in local communities throughout the United States. Previous research has provided important snapshots into specific access issues confronted by LHDs; however, the literature lacks a more comprehensive view of LHDs' efforts to ensure broad access to care, how these have evolved over time more recently, and whether certain types of LHDs governance structures are more likely to engage in activities to ensure access to care. The purpose of this study was to address these gaps in the literature by exploring the prevalence of different activities to ensure access to care, describing how the prevalence of these activities have evolved over time, and examining whether the prevalence of these activities varied as a function of different governance structures. Using pooled, cross‐sectional survey data from four waves of a survey (2009, 2013, 2016, 2019) of LHDs in the United States, the univariate and bivariate analysis revealed that, over time, LHDs have generally increased their efforts to assess gaps in access to healthcare services and across all healthcare categories (i.e., medical, dental, behavioural health) but especially for behavioural health. Poisson regression models showed that LHDs with a more decentralised decision‐making structure were associated with more activities to ensure access to care, as compared to more centralised structures. Collectively, our findings indicate that despite growth in the number and percentage of LHDs assessing and addressing gaps in services, opportunities still exist to enhance access to healthcare services in local communities, particularly in the areas of dental and behavioural health. Our findings also suggest that stakeholders interested in improving LHDs’ efforts to ensure access to care in local communities may want to pay close attention to governance features of LHDs.