Abstract: Disparities in Health Care Quality Among Asian Children with Special Health Care Needs (Society for Social Work and Research 20th Annual Conference - Grand Challenges for Social Work: Setting a Research Agenda for the Future)

Schedule:

Saturday, January 16, 2016: 10:15 AM

Meeting Room Level-Meeting Room 12 (Renaissance Washington, DC Downtown Hotel)

* noted as presenting author

Esther Son, PhD, Assistant Professor, College of Staten Island, City University of New York, staten Island, NY

Leah Igdalsky, Research Associate, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Susan L. Parish, PhD, MSW, Nancy Lurie Marks Professor of Disability Policy and Director, Lurie Institute for Disability Policy, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Background & Purpose

There is a dearth of information on health care, service utilization, and quality of care among Asian American children, and particularly children with special health care needs. Research on the health care experiences of Asian children with special health care needs is particularly sparse. As compared with their typically-developing peers, children with special health care needs require more frequent and more intensive health services. The goal of this study was to identify racial and ethnic disparities in health care access, service utilization and quality of Asian children with special health care needs, whose experiences have not been studied.

Methods

Data were derived from the 2009/10 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs. The sample of children with special health care needs was drawn from nine states where the population of Asian children met the minimum 5% of threshold for making the data public without breaching confidentiality. The final analytic sample included 355 non-Hispanic Asian and 4,343 non-Hispanic White children with special health care needs. Descriptive bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed. Regression models included the following covariates: child’s age, sex, insurance, and severity of impairment; and parental education, income, and urban/rural living situation. Statistical analyses accounted for the complex sampling design and appropriately adjusted the variance estimates.

Results

Racial disparities in quality of care were substantial between Asian and white children in 2009-2010. Asian parents were significantly less likely than White parents to report that their health care provider provided the specific information they needed, helped them feel like a partner in their child’s care, and was sensitive to family’s values and customs after controlling for the covariates. There were no statistically significant differences in health care access and service utilization after adjusting for model covariates.

Conclusions & Implications

The results show clear evidence that Asian children with special health care needs face greater challenges in receiving high-quality health care than White children. The development and testing of specific, targeted policy and practice interventions to reduce quality disparities of these children are urgently needed.