Report: Married men more apt to seek preventive care
ATLANTA — The National Center for Health Statistics on Wednesday released a report finding that married men were more likely than not-married men to have had a healthcare visit within the past 12 months. This association was observed for both younger and older men, but only among men with health insurance. When men have the means to access health care, spouses may play a role in their use of health care by directly encouraging men to seek preventive care and by indirectly evoking in men a sense of economic and social obligation to the family, the report suggested.
According to the report, cohabiting partners do not play a similar health-promoting role. Compared with both married men and other not-married men, cohabiting men were less likely to have had a health care visit. They were also less likely to have had selected clinical preventive services in the past 12 months, including blood pressure checks and screenings for elevated cholesterol and diabetes. In fact, cohabiting men are a group particularly at risk of not receiving clinical preventive services recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Only about one-half of men in this group for whom cholesterol and diabetes screenings are recommended had received these screenings in the past 12 months.
Previous research has demonstrated that married men are more likely than not-married men to seek preventive health care services because their spouses encourage them to do so. It was not known, however, whether cohabiting partners of not-married men play a health-promoting role similar to that of spouses. With data from the 2011–2012 National Health Interview Survey, selected measures of preventive health care service use were compared for three groups of men aged 18–64: married men (defined as those living with a spouse), cohabiting men (defined as those living with a partner who is not a spouse) and other not-married men. The consistency of observed differences by age and health insurance coverage status was also investigated.