By Carlina Hansen, California Health Care Foundation, August 16, 2019
Over the last few months, I’ve had the privilege of listening to more than 100 low-income Californians talk about their experiences and aspirations in the health care system. One takeaway from those conversations rises above everything else I heard: They want to be treated as whole people, not as symptoms, visits, or poor people.
The focus groups and interviews we’ve been conducting in recent months were part of a CHCF-funded research project launched last spring to better understand the health care experiences and priorities of Californians with low incomes. (You can read this Q&A from our CHCF blog for more background on the project.) Focus groups are panels with diverse participants led by a professional moderator who facilitates conversations that provide insights into individuals’ experiences and attitudes on a given topic.
CHCF isn’t the first to explore how people experience health care in California, but there are important ways we wanted to dive deeper. Some of the existing data about care experiences and priorities are not available, not segmented by poverty level or insurance status, or are examined using only qualitative or quantitative analysis. This listening project is a powerful complement to existing research because it weaves together qualitative and quantitative work to tell a story about people’s experience of care, with a focus on those who have low incomes.
Comments (1)