Everyone deserves access to the preventive care and screenings that are essential to leading a healthy life.
by Anand Parekh, MD, MPH & Kate Berry, senior vice president, clinical innovation & strategic partnerships, at AHIP.
Imagine a world where deadly diseases are caught early, lives are saved, and health care costs are drastically reduced. This vision can become a reality if we prioritize prevention and significantly boost the uptake of high-value, evidence-based preventive services.
Everyone deserves access to the preventive care and screenings that are essential to leading a healthy life. Cancer screenings, smoking cessation interventions, and vaccinations are all critical for keeping people of all ages healthy and identifying potential problems early.
However, the uptake of recommended preventive services remains shockingly low – with some estimates indicating that less than 10% of adults receive all of their high-priority, recommended services.
Consider this: While approximately 80% of adults are up-to-date with heart disease screenings and 60-70% are current with cancer screenings, only 30-40% are being screened or referred for substance use and mental health conditions. And the COVID-19 pandemic set us back further.
Why are we missing out? Health care professionals have limited time with patients, and patients may not know what is recommended for them or that preventive services are available at no cost to them. Some patients also face social barriers to accessing care, such as transportation or childcare needs, that prevent making an appointment.
Missing screenings matters. Take colorectal cancer, for instance, which is the third leading cause of cancer-associated death for both men and women in the United States, with over 140,000 new diagnoses each year. The risk of colorectal cancer increases with age, and those individuals diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, have a family history of colorectal cancer, smoke, drink, and do not exercise regularly are at an even greater risk of colorectal cancer.
Screening for colorectal cancer reduces mortality and using certain screening tools can reduce colorectal cancer incidence. However, over 1 in 3 adults aged 45 and older are not screened as recommended.
Flu-related hospitalizations have ranged from 140,000 to 710,000 and flu related deaths have ranged from 12,000 to 56,000 since 2010, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 320,000 people also get pneumococcal pneumonia every year, leading to over 150,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, mostly among the elderly, and about 880,000 people have chronic hepatitis B, which can cause serious health problems, including liver damage, cirrhosis, liver cancer, and even death.
Vaccines against these infections are safe and widely effective in preventing a wide range of diseases from childhood through the adult lifespan.
That’s why we are so excited about the recent launch of Promoting Health Through Prevention (PHtP), a coordinated national campaign of insurers, health care professional groups, scientific agencies, and patient organizations to promote the availability of evidence-based preventive services for no out-of-pocket cost.
Our goal is to raise awareness and increase the uptake of recommended preventive services that are available to consumers with no cost share. We want to encourage people to take advantage of the benefits available to them to stay healthy.
One of the tools we’re using is MyHealthfinder, which was developed by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The tool allows consumers to enter in their age and sex and find out what screenings and vaccines they need to stay healthy. For individuals without a primary care provider to discuss these findings, the tool also allows them to find a local community health center, volunteer clinic, or local health department nearby.
Preventive health screenings and services promote timely, whole person care and can help detect more serious conditions early when they are more treatable. By working together to promote access to preventive services, we can improve affordable access and high value care so everyone can get the care they need, when they need it, to achieve their best health.
