Mapping Gender Differences in Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes Care

Mapping Gender Differences in Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes Care: A Pilot Assessment of LDL Cholesterol Testing Rates in a California Health Plan

Chloe E. Bird
Allen Fremont
Mark Hanson
Copyright Date: 2014
Published by: RAND Corporation
Pages: 36
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt5vjwfp
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  • Book Info
    Mapping Gender Differences in Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes Care
    Book Description:

    The care women receive for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes—and their health outcomes—continue to lag behind those of men, even for routine care. Awareness of and action to address gender gaps in women’s CVD care are limited, in part, because quality of care is not routinely measured and reported by gender. This pilot project describes and maps gender differences in CVD and diabetes care using data from a large health plan.

    eISBN: 978-0-8330-8461-3
    Subjects: Health Sciences, Public Health, History

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-ii)
  2. Preface
    (pp. iii-iii)
  3. Table of Contents
    (pp. iv-iv)
  4. Figures
    (pp. v-v)
  5. Summary
    (pp. vi-xii)
  6. Acknowledgments
    (pp. xiii-xiii)
  7. Abbreviations
    (pp. xiv-xiv)
  8. I. Introduction
    (pp. 1-3)

    Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes contribute significantly to the burden of disease among women. More than one in three adult women has some form of CVD (American Heart Association and American Stroke Association, 2013), which includes both heart disease and other vascular diseases. In fact, women spend more years living with CVD than do men, and 26 percent of women over age 45 die within a year of having a recognized heart attack, compared with 19 percent of men (American Heart Association Statistics Committee and Stroke Statistics, 2012). Women also account for 60 percent of the deaths from strokes in...

  9. II. Methods
    (pp. 4-8)

    To compare quality of care for any two patient groups (e.g., patients receiving care in different health care systems, patients with different insurance types, or patients living in different geographic areas), we need to be able to precisely define both the groups and the type of care to be studied (e.g., a specific type of screening, treatment, or control over a specific biological risk factor, such as high LDL cholesterol) and then need to ensure that both groups being compared are composed of individuals who need that care.

    In this section, we describe the methods used in this study. We...

  10. III. Findings
    (pp. 9-17)

    We begin by comparing overall gender differences in LDL screening among the CVD and diabetes populations. We then examine whether and how other factors are associated with quality of care for LDL screening and whether these differ by gender. Next, we test for independent effects of gender on quality of care when various other factors are taken into account. Finally, we map the gender disparities to display the geographic variation in quality of care.

    Men had higher rates of LDL screening than did women in both the CVD and diabetes populations. Among adults with CVD, men were more likely than...

  11. IV. Conclusion and Implications
    (pp. 18-20)

    This research has important implications for women, their clinicians, other stakeholders, and policymakers. Although the deficits in women’s cardiovascular care may have developed unintentionally, their persistence as indicated by prior research and this study suggests that efforts to address them need to be both intentional and focused.

    The research revealed variation in the overall quality of care for patients with CVD and diabetes in California, as well as gender disparities in care. Among the most striking findings is that gender differences in care varied by age, with larger gender gaps in care among both younger and older adults than those...

  12. References
    (pp. 21-22)