Journal article
Do communities differ in health behaviors?
Journal of clinical epidemiology, Vol.46(10), pp.1141-1149
10/1993
DOI: 10.1016/0895-4356(93)90113-F
PMID: 8410099
Abstract
Communities differ in the prevalence of various health behaviors, but it is not known to what extent these differences are due to “different types” of people living in them. We used data from the evaluation of the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation Community Health Promotion Grant Program to study individual-level and community-level variation in health behaviors for 15 communities. Our results show (1) there was significant variation among these communities in prevalences of smoking, consumption of alcohol and dietary fat, and use of seatbelts; (2) these differences persisted after control for demographic, health status, and other health behavioral characteristics of the people in the communities; (3) the community effect on a particular person's behavior, as represented by R2, was very small (less than I%); and (4) the adjusted differences in prevalences among communities were potentially large (for example, a 7 percentage point difference in the probability of smoking). Unique features of communities may influence health behaviors. These findings affirm the potential importance of contextual effects on individual health behavior and thus support the theory that changing the community environment may offer effective ways to change individual health behavior.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Do communities differ in health behaviors?
- Creators
- Paula Diehr - University of WashingtonThomas Koepsell - University of WashingtonAllen Cheadle - University of WashingtonBruce M. Psaty - University of WashingtonEdward Wagner - Group Health CooperativeSusan Curry - University of Washington
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of clinical epidemiology, Vol.46(10), pp.1141-1149
- Publisher
- Elsevier Inc
- DOI
- 10.1016/0895-4356(93)90113-F
- PMID
- 8410099
- ISSN
- 0895-4356
- eISSN
- 1878-5921
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/1993
- Academic Unit
- Health Management and Policy; Community and Behavioral Health
- Record Identifier
- 9984366291602771
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