Delays in Children's Preventive Health Services During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background and objectives: Stay-at-home orders, social isolation recommendations, and fear of COVID-19 exposure have led to delays in children's preventive health services during the pandemic. Delays can lead to missed opportunities for early screening and detection of health problems, and increased risks for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Understanding prevalence of and reasons for missed, delayed, or skipped preventive health services is important for developing strategies to achieve rapid catch-up of essential health services.

Methods: Using the Household Pulse Survey (n=37,064), a large, nationally-representative household survey fielded from April 14 to May 10, 2021, we examined prevalence of households with children who have missed, delayed, or skipped preventive health services, and factors associated with and reasons contributing to missed, delayed, or skipped preventive health services.

Results: About one-quarter of parents had children who missed, delayed, or skipped preventive check-ups in the past year. Delays in children's preventive health services were more common among respondents with higher education, households with greater numbers of children, and children who learned remotely or did not participate in formal education. Main reasons attributed to delayed preventive health services were limited appointments at health providers' offices (42.9%), concern about COVID-19 exposure at health providers' offices (42.2%), and closed health providers' offices due to the pandemic (29.0%).

Conclusions: Physician office closures and concern about COVID-19 exposure resulted in over one-quarter of parents delaying preventive services for their children since the pandemic began. Coordinated efforts are needed to achieve rapid catch-up of preventive services and routine vaccines.