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An equity analysis of utilization of health services in Afghanistan using a national household survey

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Public Health, December 2016
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  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (69th percentile)
  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (54th percentile)

Mentioned by

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1 policy source
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2 X users

Citations

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39 Dimensions

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167 Mendeley
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Title
An equity analysis of utilization of health services in Afghanistan using a national household survey
Published in
BMC Public Health, December 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12889-016-3894-z
Pubmed ID
Authors

Christine Kim, Khwaja Mir Ahad Saeed, Ahmad Shah Salehi, Wu Zeng

Abstract

Afghanistan has made great strides in the coverage of health services across the country but coverage of key indicators remains low nationally and whether the poorest households are accessing these services is not well understood. We analyzed the Afghanistan Mortality Survey 2010 on utilization of inpatient and outpatient care, institutional delivery and antenatal care by wealth quintiles. Concentration indexes (CIs) were generated to measure the inequality of using the four services. Additional analyses were conducted to examine factors that explain the health inequalities (e.g. age, gender, education and residence). Among households reporting utilization of health services, public health facilities were used more often for inpatient care, while they were used less for outpatient care. Overall, the utilization of inpatient and outpatient care, and antenatal care was equally distributed among income groups, with CIs of 0.04, 0.03 and 0.08, respectively. However, the poor used more public facilities while the wealthy used more private facilities. There was a substantial inequality in the use of institutional delivery services, with a CI of 0.31. Poorer women had a lower rate of institutional deliveries overall, in both public and private facilities, compared to the wealthy. Location was an important factor in explaining the inequality in the use of health services. The large gap between the rich and poor in access to and utilization of key maternal services, such as institutional delivery, may be a central factor to the high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity and impedes efforts to make progress toward universal health coverage. While poorer households use public health services more often, the use of public facilities for outpatient visits remains half that of private facilities. Pro-poor targeting as well as a better understanding of the private sector's role in increasing equitable coverage of maternal health services is needed. Equity-oriented approaches in health should be prioritized to promote more inclusive health system reforms.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 2 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 167 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 167 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 26 16%
Student > Master 25 15%
Student > Ph. D. Student 16 10%
Student > Bachelor 15 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 10 6%
Other 14 8%
Unknown 61 37%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 33 20%
Medicine and Dentistry 28 17%
Social Sciences 13 8%
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 8 5%
Arts and Humanities 4 2%
Other 17 10%
Unknown 64 38%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 April 2020.
All research outputs
#7,184,819
of 23,923,788 outputs
Outputs from BMC Public Health
#7,463
of 15,554 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#126,301
of 421,371 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Public Health
#92
of 199 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,923,788 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 69th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 15,554 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 51% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 421,371 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 199 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 54% of its contemporaries.