Demand and use of health services by Brazilian adolescents, according to the National School Health Survey 2019

Abstract

Objective: To analyze the demand and use of health services by Brazilian adolescents, according to sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: Cross-sectional study with data from the 2019 National School Health Survey that assessed 125,327 adolescents aged 13 to 17 years. The crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (RPaj) by sex, age, and school administrative dependency and their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) of the variables: “Seek for a service or health professional”, “Seek for a Basic Health Unit” and “Attendance at the Basic Health Unit”, using Poisson regression with robust variance. Results: The demand of some health service was reported by 55.93% (95%CI: 55.16-56.70) of the adolescents and was lower among male students (RPaj: 0.95; 95%CI: 0.94-0.95); those with black skin color (RPaj: 0.96; 95%CI: 0.94-0.97), brown (RPaj: 0.97; 95%CI: 0.96-0.98), yellow and indigenous (RPaj: 0.95; 95%CI: 0.94-0.97); public school students (RPaj: 0.90;95%CI: 0.89-0.90) and rural residents (RPaj: 0.96; 95%CI: 0.94-0.98). Among those adolescents who demanded any health service, 74.34% (95%CI: 73.34-75.3) reported having sought a Basic Health Unit, being more frequent by students of brown skin color (RPaj: 1.05; 95%CI: 1.03-1.07) and from public schools (RPaj: 1.29; 95%CI: 1.26-1.32). The main reason for seeking the Basic Health Unit was vaccination (27.91%; 95%CI: 27.03-28.8). Conclusion: More than half of the adolescents demanded some health service, showing a high demand from this population. However, health inequalities still persist, alerting to the importance of planning, welcoming, and quality of care provided to adolescents.