Findings show persistent decline by 20 to 30 percent for birth control, cancer screening, sexually transmitted infection screening<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
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TUESDAY, Aug. 3, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Women’s use of a range of preventive health services was down in 2020, according to a study published online July 2 in JAMA Health Forum<\/em>.<\/p>\n Nora V. Becker, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, and colleagues used data from 685,373 women (aged 18 to 74 years) enrolled in a commercial health maintenance organization in Michigan to understand utilization of women’s preventive health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n The researchers found that for services requiring an in-person visit (breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, sexually transmitted infection [STI] testing, and long-acting reversible contraception [LARC] insertions), utilization declined by 60 to 90 percent during the spring of 2020, with utilization for all services recovering by July 2020 following a nadir in April 2020. In 2020, claims for pharmacy-obtained hormonal contraceptives were consistently 15 to 30 percent lower than in 2019. Compared with 2019, the odds of a woman receiving a given preventive service in 2020 were significantly lower, including for breast cancer screening (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.80), cervical cancer screening (aOR, 0.80), STI screening (aOR, 0.83), LARC insertion (aOR, 0.87), and pharmacy-obtained contraception (aOR, 0.73).<\/p>\n “The pandemic has disrupted the utilization of women’s preventive health services and may be associated with increased disparities in access to these services,” the authors write.<\/p>\n One author disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n