Modelling the Number of Household Visit to Health Care Centres in Some Nigeria Communities Using Count Data Regression Models

The need to model the impact of some demographic indicators on the frequency of household visits to healthcare centres in Nigeria's community is very important for preventing and spreading community diseases. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the patents' age, gender, marital status, type of illness and amount spent on the frequency of visits to community health care centres in Nigeria and to compared Negative Binomial Regression (NBR) and Generalized Poisson Regression GPR) models to determine the preferred count regression model for the number of household visits to health centres in some communities in Nigeria. 

Survey of 132640 households in some Nigeria communities obtained from the 2018/2019 Nigeria Living Standard Survey (NLSS) were extracted from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in collaboration with the World Bank. The Negative Binomial and Generalised Poisson regression models were used to investigate the five demographic variables on the frequency of visit to the community health centres. The performance of the count regression model was assessed using the Chi-square -2log Likelihood Statistic (2logL), Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion BIC) selection criteria. 

Findings from the study showed that the type of illness and amount spent has a significantly positive effect on the number of household members' visits to the community health care centres in Nigeria while age, gender, and marital status was discovered to have a negative effect on the number of household members' visits to the community health care centres in Nigeria. 

The Nigeria Government, health centre management and community healthcare service providers' need to be aware that the amount spent and the nature of illness determines the level of health care services utilisation in the Nigeria community, hence the need for the drastic reduction in charges to encourage a household visit to the community health centres whenever the need arises.