International health brief
Access to health care among Australian adolescents young people's perspectives and their sociodemographic distribution

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2003.06.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To identify the health concerns for which adolescent residents in New South Wales, Australia, do not receive health care, and the associated factors, including their sociodemographic distribution.

Methods

Purposive sampling was used to recruit school students who were stratified by gender and age (12–14, 14–16 and 16–17 years), from schools stratified by socioeconomic status and urban/rural location. Out-of-school young people were recruited through youth health services. Qualitative methods were used to collect and analyze data.

Results

Eighty-one focus groups were conducted. Most young people defined health solely in terms of their physical well-being, but still identified a broad range of situations, conditions, or behaviors which they believed might affect their health. One-third of females and two-thirds of males said they would not seek help for their health concerns, and when they did, were most likely to seek help from family, friends, or others they trusted. When professional help was sought, young people again preferred someone they knew and trusted. The three groups of barriers to accessing health care were: concerns about confidentiality, knowledge of services and discomfort in disclosing health concerns, and accessibility and characteristics of services. Factors related to use of health care services were associated with age, gender, and location, but rarely with socioeconomic status.

Conclusions

The majority of these young people in New South Wales (particularly males) do not seek health care despite identifying a broad range of issues that affect their health.

Section snippets

Design

Quota sampling by required characteristics was used to select the high schools (see procedure below) from which school students were recruited. Purposive sampling, a form of nonprobability sampling 14, 15, was used to recruit high school students and also out-of-school young people. This study was approved by the Children's Hospital at Westmead Human Research Ethics Committee, the NSW Department of Education and Training, and the Human Ethics Committees of the Area Health Services in which

Definitions of health

Most young people defined “health” in terms of physical health. Definitions included “fitness, food, your physical state, hygiene, keeping your body in good condition…” In response to probing by the facilitator, some young people accepted the relevance of sexual and mental health being included. Those who included aspects of health other than physical well-being were all in Year 11 and of these, females were more likely to offer a broader definition of health than males. Definitions of health

Discussion

Despite most young people restricting their stated definitions of health to physical well-being, most had broad perspectives on the factors which might affect their health. When young people had a significant health concern, a great many of them did not seek help and when they did, they were more likely to seek help from those with whom they were close rather than from health professionals. However, a study conducted among adolescents in England found that the person from whom help was sought

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by a grant from the NSW Health Department to the NSW Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health.

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