A Longitudinal Analysis of Rural and Urban Veterans’ Health-Related Quality of Life

Amy E. Wallace · Todd A. MacKenzie · Alan N. West · Steven Wright · Brenda M. Booth · William Brinson Weeks

60 citations0/0 files storedThe Journal of Rural Health

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Health disparities and outcomes Healthcare Policy and Management Education and Military Integration

Abstract

CONTEXT: Cross-sectional studies have identified rural-urban disparities in veterans' health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) scores. PURPOSE: To determine whether longitudinal analyses confirmed that these disparities in veterans' HRQOL scores persisted. METHODS: We obtained data from the SF-12 portion of the veterans health administration's (VA's) Survey of Healthcare Experiences of Patients (SHEP) collected between 2002 and 2006. During that time, the SHEP was randomly administered to approximately 250,000 veterans annually who had used VA outpatient services. We evaluated 163,709 responses from veterans who had completed 2 or more surveys during the years studied. Respondents were classified into rural-urban groups using ZIP Code-based rural-urban commuting area designations. We estimated linear regression models using generalized estimating equations to determine whether rural and urban veterans' HRQOL scores were changing at different rates over the time period examined. FINDINGS: After adjustment for sociodemographic differences, we found that urban veterans had substantially better physical HRQOL scores than their rural counterparts and that these differences persisted over the study period. While urban veterans had worse mental HRQOL scores than rural veterans, those differences diminished over the time period studied. CONCLUSIONS: Rural-urban disparities in HRQOL scores persist when tracking veterans longitudinally. Reduced access among rural veterans to care may contribute to these disparities. Because rural soldiers are overrepresented in current conflicts, the VA should consider new models of care delivery to improve access to care for rural veterans.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 60 citations exist upstream.

References

2001Multilevel analyses of neighbourhood socioeconomic context and health outcomes: a critical review: Table 1 2000Influences of socioeconomic status, social network, and competence on subjective well-being in later life: A meta-analysis.1981The health-related functions of social support 2000Are Patients at Veterans Affairs Medical Centers Sicker?2003Reducing psychiatric stigma and discrimination: evaluation of educational interventions in UK secondary schools 2002Primary Care, Self‐rated Health, and Reductions in Social Disparities in Health 1999Health Status in VA Patients: Results from the Veterans Health Study 1997Psychological Distress and Help Seeking in Rural America

Cited by

2012Worsening trends and increasing disparities in health-related quality of life: evidence from two French population-based cross-sectional surveys, 1995–2003 2015Spatiotemporal Discordance in Five Common Measures of Rurality for US Counties and Applications for Health Disparities Research in Older Adults 2020Rural and Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Veteran Health Disparities: a Population-Based Study

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.