Biomaterial Database

Financial burden for families of children with special health care needs. 2005

Karen Kuhlthau, and Kristen Smith Hill, and Recai Yucel, and James M Perrin

Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. kkuhlthau@partners.org

OBJECTIVE We describe family finance-related burden experienced by families with children with special health care needs (CSHCN). The paper further seeks to describe correlates of family financial burden. METHODS We examined correlates of family finance-related burden using multivariate methods and the National Survey of CSHCN, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of CSHCN. We also examined state-level correlations. RESULTS Fully 40% of families with CSHCN, or 3,746,000 families nation-wide, experience financial burden related to their child's condition. Experiencing a finance-related problem is negatively associated with Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) indicators and positively associated with poor-child health status. States that better meet MCHB indicators generally have lower levels of family finance-related problems. CONCLUSIONS Families with CSHCN have high levels of finance-related family problems. Development of appropriate systems of care appears to offer a mechanism for alleviating the financial burdens of these families.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D007223	Infant	A child between 1 and 23 months of age.	Infants
D007231	Infant, Newborn	An infant during the first 28 days after birth.	Neonate,Newborns,Infants, Newborn,Neonates,Newborn,Newborn Infant,Newborn Infants
D008297	Male		Males
D002648	Child	A person 6 to 12 years of age. An individual 2 to 5 years old is CHILD, PRESCHOOL.	Children
D002675	Child, Preschool	A child between the ages of 2 and 5.	Children, Preschool,Preschool Child,Preschool Children
D004467	Economics	The science of utilization, distribution, and consumption of services and materials.	Consumer Price Index,Capital,Conditions, Economic,Consumption,Cost of Living,Easterlin Hypothesis,Economic Conditions,Economic Policies,Economic Policy,Economics, Home,Home Economics,Household Consumption,Macroeconomic Factors,Microeconomic Factors,Policies, Economic,Policy, Economic,Production,Remittances,Utility Theory,Condition, Economic,Consumer Price Indices,Consumption, Household,Economic Condition,Factor, Macroeconomic,Factor, Microeconomic,Factors, Macroeconomic,Factors, Microeconomic,Household Consumptions,Hypothesis, Easterlin,Index, Consumer Price,Indices, Consumer Price,Living Cost,Living Costs,Remittance,Theories, Utility,Theory, Utility,Utility Theories
D005190	Family	A social group consisting of parents or parent substitutes and children.	Family Life Cycles,Family Members,Family Life Cycle,Family Research,Filiation,Kinship Networks,Relatives,Families,Family Member,Kinship Network,Life Cycle, Family,Life Cycles, Family,Network, Kinship,Networks, Kinship,Research, Family
D005260	Female		Females
D006301	Health Services Needs and Demand	Health services required by a population or community as well as the health services that the population or community is able and willing to pay for.	Health Services Needs,Needs,Needs and Demand, Health Services,Target Population,Health Services Need,Need, Health Services,Needs, Health Services,Population, Target,Populations, Target,Target Populations
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man