95 Medication use by insurance coverage in the Southern Cone of Latin America 4 potential differences in medication use by coverage type. Finally, we only report data on use of medication. Other important aspects, such as adequacy of doses have not been analysed, and may or may not show differences between insured and uninsured populations. CONCLUSION The type of insurance coverage did not affect the use of medications in participants with CHD in four cities of the Southern Cone of Latin America: subjects covered exclusively by public healthcare system were able to use recommended cardioprotective medications at the same rates as participants with private or social insurance. Nevertheless, healthcare inequalities exist as uninsured participants more often face barriers to access and afford medical care and medication. Further studies should research in depth these potential inequalities in healthcare use. FUNDING This work was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) grant number HHSN268200900029C. ETHICAL ASPECTS AND INFORMED CONSENT The study was conducted following the guidelines for protection of human volunteers’ rights and it is in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol of the study received approval from Institutional Review Boards for all participating institutions in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and the United States. All study participants provided written informed consent (3). CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Authors declare no conflicts of interest. AUTHOR’S CONTRIBUTIONS AMF performed the formal analysis and wrote the original draft. LG conducted data management and curation. AMF, LG, PG, IV, KKG, and IV contributed to the conceptualization of this work. All authors (AMF, LG, PG, IV, DEG, KKG, VI) critically reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version. DATA AVAILABILITY Data is available upon reasonable request to co-authors.
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