“I was somewhat surprised that insurance completely accounted for the association between unemployment and receipt of cancer screening tests,” Fedewa said. 001).Īccounting for health insurance coverage negated the differences. employed adults) had a significantly lower up-to-date prevalence of screening for cervical cancer (78.5% vs. Results showed unemployed adults had a four times higher likelihood of lacking insurance than employed adults (41.4% vs 10%) and that unemployed adults (vs. Recent (within the past year) and up-to-date breast, cervical, colorectal and prostate cancer screening prevalence served as the study’s primary outcomes. They defined up-to-date screening prevalence per USPSTF recommendations and used recent screening prevalence to assess proximal associations between screening practices and unemployment. Preventive Services Task Force have longer intervals and that up-to-date screening may have been achieved prior to job loss. The researchers hypothesized that current unemployment may be more strongly associated with recent screening prevalence than up-to-date screening prevalence, reasoning that some tests recommended by the U.S. 40.2%).įedewa and colleagues computed up-to-date and past-year screening prevalence for breast, cervical, colorectal and prostate cancers using survey data from 2000 to 2018, and evaluated self-reported past-week employment data from respondents. 64.2%), and a greater proportion of employed adults had private insurance (83.5% vs.
The majority of respondents in the employed and unemployed groups were men (51.9% vs. The analysis included 62,314 employed and 3,428 unemployed screening-eligible adults aged 50 to 64 years identified through the National Health Interview Survey.
We felt this was an important research question because health insurance among unemployed persons is potentially modifiable.”įedewa and colleagues examined associations among unemployment, health insurance and cancer screening to decipher the pandemic’s potential impacts on early cancer detection. “Previous research has reported that unemployed persons have lower cancer screening utilization, but we couldn’t find a previous study that looked at the role of health insurance, too. Fedewa, PhD, MPH, senior principal scientist of risk factors and screening surveillance research at American Cancer Society, told Healio. “As unemployment rates rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, we wondered how this might influence cancer screening,” Stacey A.
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