For this week's topic, I picked Health Care Utilization and reviewed the article by Ng et al. (2024), which examined patterns of hospital-based service use among middle-aged adults (ages 45-64). This age group is often overlooked, yet it constitutes a significant portion of high healthcare usersapproximately 37% of the top 10% of healthcare spenders in the U.S. fall within this range. The study utilized descriptive statistics to summarize data from 25 different studies, categorizing them by country type (developed vs. developing) and evaluating health service use trends based on the Andersen healthcare utilization model. The researchers identified common predictors of high utilization, including multimorbidity (the presence of multiple chronic conditions), poor health behaviors (such as smoking and physical inactivity), and socioeconomic status. For instance, one study revealed that middle-aged individuals with obesity had significantly more outpatient visits and prescribed medications compared to those without obesity