THE USE AND EFFECTS OF HEALTH INFORMATION

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The supply of health information and self-care resources is rapidly growing, and its dissemination is favored by many on the presumption that informed consumers/patients will use health services more appropriate. This position has been challenged, whereby the predominant concern is that an increase in health information only leads to a state of "information overload" for the patient. To date, research on this topic has been limited due in part to a paucity of relevant, high-quality data. A community-wide, information-intervention (The Healthwide Community Project [HCP]) in Boise, Idaho provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of self-care information on utilization and health status. Pre and post data for the intervention site (i.e., Boise) and two control communities (i.e., Billings, MT and Eugene, OR) will be used in this study. Sample sizes for the baseline survey are 909 in Boise, 890 in Billings and 1,067 in Eugene. Follow-up data are in the process of being collected, but even with a 50% attrition rate, there will be 96% power to detect small changes (effect size = .39) This study has three specific aims: (1) to determine what factors are related to the use of self-care information; (2) to determine if the use of self-care information is associated with changes in utilization and health status; and (3) to assess the intervention's community-level effect on medical utilization and health status. Analysis will be both descriptive and analytical in nature. The multivariate econometrics require logistic, probit and conditional logit models, depending on the dependent variable. We expect that this study will help determine the value of providing consumers with self-care information, as well as address issues about who uses health information and whether giving people self-care information affects health services utilization and health status.