We used a concentration index (CI) to assess equality in the distribution of needs and utilisation among three areas with different per-head gross domestic product (GDP).
From the perspective of community medicine, the identification of an imbalance between needs and utilisation of psychotropic medication raises questions about equity in access to healthcare resources.
Therefore, further analyses must investigate the role of interventionists' expertise and treatment performance, and the role of participants' needs and utilisation of healthcare resources, before conclusions on international implementation of this intense occupational therapy intervention can be drawn.
This study has demonstrated a positive relationship between health need and the utilisation of health services under a mixed public-private funded health care system.
In stable contexts, there is some evidence that CTP can address financial barriers to meet health and nutrition needs and improve utilisation of priority services (Bastagli et al. 2016; Bassani et al. 2013; Manley et al. 2012).
Prevalence data provide an estimation of the disease burden on a society and, by assessing needs and service utilisation, can be used to inform resource allocation and mental health policy [ 2, 4].
The strength of this research lies in the sample itself who are a relatively young cohort of actively injecting PWID, the majority of whom were out of treatment at baseline and may have different health needs and service utilisation patterns compared to other injecting populations previously studied e.g. [ 7, 55].
Other authors disagree with this concept and tend to believe that the immigrant population shows poorer self-perceived health and/or greater need and health services utilisation.
However, as there is the acute need for improved delivery and utilisation of current drugs/technologies, informed by research from social science approaches, funding priorities need to reflect the need to invest significantly more in social science research.
