Application of the Andersen's health care utilization framework to secondary complications of spinal cord injury: a...

The purpose of this scoping review was to identify research priority areas related to secondary complications and associated health care use for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Peer-reviewed journals were identified using CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase, Social Sciences Abstracts, Social Works Abstract and PsycInfo search engines. Key references were hand searched.

A total of 289 abstracts were identified from the initial search strategy. We removed studies that did not measure health care and those that did not involve analytical investigation.

The selected 31 studies were reviewed in detail using a coding template based on the domains and sub-components of the Andersen model (i.e. environmental, population characteristics, health behavior and outcome).

Most studies measured predisposing characteristics (e.g., age, gender) and need characteristics (e.g., level of injury). There was a notable absence of environmental characteristics (e.g., health system, neighborhood variables), enabling characteristics and health behaviors (beyond diet and nutrition).

We identified a gap in the SCI literature. Future research should focus on longitudinal study designs with more representation of non-traumatic spinal cord injury, as well as utilizing more advanced statistical analyses (i.e., multivariate level) to adjust for confounding variables.