Delivering Preventive Health Care Information to More versus Less Health-Oriented Consumers: A Comparative Demographic Analysis

Preventive health care (PHC) is the awareness and efforts a person undertakes to enhance and preserve physical, mental, and emotional health for today and future. Although PHC information is widely available, people are not utilizing the information to improve their health. We examine PHC information sources utilized by persons who are more health-oriented vs. less health-oriented. The less health-oriented individuals were identified as: low educational attainment, low income, men, younger age, unmarried, and non-White. A factor analysis produced three primary sources of PHC information sources: print, institutional, and electronic and audio-visual delivery systems. An ANOVA compared how more health-oriented individuals differed from less health-oriented individuals regarding the importance of PHC information sources. As expected, men and unmarried individuals placed less importance on PHC sources information. Younger individuals placed greater importance on institutional and electronic sources of PHC information. Furthermore, non-Whites considered institutional sources of PHC to be more important than Whites, and those without college degrees considered print sources to be more important than those with college degree. There were no differences among income groups.