Assessment of Inequity for Childhood Health Care Package Provision in Family Medicine Program According to the Distance to the Center of the District and Province

Background & Objectives:: To assess inequity of childhood health care package provision according to the distance of health houses from the town and the provincial capital in Markazi province (Iran). Methods: We used 4 measures of childhood health care provision by family medicine program in randomly selected health houses in Markazi province. The measures included were monitoring of the childhood health by the GP (General Practitioner), childhood disease management according to the Iranian MOHME guidelines, good knowledge of the GP about the content of the guidelines and good knowledge of the GP about the 1-59 month death registration system. These measures were estimated by a predefined, interviewer administered questionnaire. The distance of each selected health house was determined in each district health center. To assess the inequity of the measures we estimated concentration index and its 95% confidence interval using covariance method. P Values of greater than 0.05 were considered as statistically insignificant. Results: About 46 health house were randomly selected. All of the estimated concentration indices about the childhood care measures were less than 0.1 and their differences with zero score were insignificant ( p value> 0.05 ). Conclusion: according to the data of our study it seems there is no inequity between different health houses in accordance of their distance from district center and provincial capital. It seems necessary to measure other health indices to assess the inequity of the whole of the health care providing system.