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BEHAN SURVEYS HEALTH CARE DECISIONS OF INSURED/UNINSURED

(January 29, 2007)   When Pamela Behan, UH-Downtown assistant professor of Sociology, worked as a nurse, she saw many patients with preventable health problems, and she wondered why. Some had no insurance, but many were insured yet faced obstacles in making health care decisions.   In graduate school, she learned that there was very little data on the subject, which led her to the research that resulted in her book Solving the Health Care Problem: How Other Nations Succeeded and Why the United States Has Not.

Last Spring, Behan joined the Houston Health Services Research Collaborative at the University of Texas School of Public Health.   Its mission is to promote and facilitate interdisciplinary research directed at improving policy and health outcomes of low-income and uninsured populations in the greater Houston area. The collaborative, funded largely by The Houston Endowment, supports small projects coordinated by a faculty investigator and one or more graduate students, and Behan had just the project.   She designed a survey that looked at how people make health care decisions based upon insurance issues.   She hopes to learn if problems of the uninsured are replicated among the insured population due to confusion about coverage or health care, low coverage of certain areas of health care, and similar issues.

The project provides Behan access to the UH Public Policy Center's computer-assisted phone system and caller database for random digit dialing.   It even accommodates calls in Spanish.   440 calls have been made thus far, and on February 9, Behan presents her findings at the University of Texas School of Public Health.

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON-DOWNTOWN
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