Low-income women: Does having Medi-Cal coverage predict increased mammography use?

As the rates of breast cancer continue to increase, researchers and medical professionals struggle to give a definitive cause of the disease or find a cure. Unfortunately, it seems that the chance of having a cancer diagnosis within one's lifetime is only increasing. Since breast cancer is somewhat unpredictable, the medical field has taken the pathway of attempting to minimize the risk of mortality through regular screening mammograms. Even with multiple initiatives to increase mammogram utilization, multiple demographic factors such as race, income status, and insurance coverage continue to be underserved. The present study will focus on income status and insurance coverage as barriers to regular screening mammograms. It is hypothesized that those women with low-income status and no insurance coverage are less likely to receive regular screening mammograms than those women with higher income and some type of insurance. After completing a statistical analysis, both hypotheses were supported