Preventive Health Care in the USA

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 28 Feb 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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National Center for Health Statistics


Use of preventive health services helps reduce morbidity and mortality from disease. Use of several different types of preventive services has been increasing. However disparities in use of preventive health care by race and ethnicity, and family income, remain.

The percent of mothers receiving prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy has continued to edge upward from 76 percent in 1990 to 83 percent in 2001.

Although increases occurred for all racial and ethnic groups, in 2001 the percent of mothers with early prenatal care still varied substantially, from 69 percent for American Indian mothers to 90-92 percent for mothers of Japanese and Cuban origin.

In 2001, 77 percent of children 19-35 months of age received the combined vaccination series of four doses of DTaP (diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis) vaccine, three doses of polio vaccine, one dose of MMR (measles-mumps-rubella vaccine), and three doses of Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) vaccine.

Children living below the poverty threshold were less likely to have received the combined vaccination series than were children living at or above poverty (72 percent compared with 79 percent).

Annual influenza vaccination can prevent influenza and its severe complications and one dose of pneumococcal vaccine can reduce the risk of invasive pneumococcal disease. Between 1989 and 1999 the percent of noninstitutionalized adults 65 years of age and over who reported an influenza vaccination within the past year more than doubled, to 66 percent and then decreased slightly to 63 percent in 2001.

Between 1989 and 2001 the percent of older adults ever having received a pneumococcal vaccine increased sharply from 14 percent to 54 percent.

Between 1987 and 2000 the age-adjusted percent of women 18 years and over who reported a Pap smear in the past 3 years increased from 74 percent to 81 percent. In 2000 Pap smear use was lower among women living below the poverty level compared with women with family incomes at or above the poverty level (72 percent and 84 percent). Pap smear use was lower among women 65 years and over than among younger women.