Social Capital and Health Care Access: A Systematic Review

There is a growing interest in community-level characteristics such as social capital and its relationship to health care access. To assess the rigor with which this construct has been empirically applied in research on health care access, a systematic review was conducted. A total of 2,396 abstract...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical care research and review 2009-06, Vol.66 (3), p.272-306
Main Authors: Pitkin Derose, Kathryn, Varda, Danielle M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attachment
Cognitive ability
Cognitive-behavioral factors
Congruence
Effects
Health care
Health care access
Health Services Accessibility
Humans
Inconsistency
Measurement
Public Health
Reviews
Social capital
Social networks
Social organization
Social Support
Systematic review
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Summary:There is a growing interest in community-level characteristics such as social capital and its relationship to health care access. To assess the rigor with which this construct has been empirically applied in research on health care access, a systematic review was conducted. A total of 2,396 abstracts were reviewed, and 21 met the criteria of examining some measure of social capital and its effects on health care access. The review found a lack of congruence in how social capital was measured and interpreted and a general inconsistency in findings, which made it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the effects of social capital on health care access. Insights from the social network literature can help improve the conceptual and measurement problems. Future work should distinguish among bonding, bridging, and linking social capital and their sources and benefits, and examine whether three dimensions of social capital actually exist: cognitive, behavioral, and structural.
ISSN:1077-5587
1552-6801
DOI:10.1177/1077558708330428