Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the use of health services according to social determinants, health behaviors and quality of life among diabetics (n = 416) attended by the Family Health Strategy in a northeastern city in Brazil. Data analysis included descriptive, bivariate and multivariate statistics. Decision Tree modeling was applied using the Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) algorithm. Results showed that public health services were used by 80.7% of the sample. The regular use of public health services involved individuals with low or medium schooling (p < 0.001), employed or retired and/or pensioners (p = 0.019), with a high impact of diabetes on quality of life (p = 0.032), and who performed the number of fasting blood glucose tests per year recommended by the Ministry of Health (p < 0.001). The use of health services could be explained by differences related to social determinants, health behaviors and the impact of diabetes on quality of life.
Key words
Diabetes mellitus; Health services; Family Health; Primary healthcare; Health inequalities
