Abstract
BackgroundModifiable health-related behaviours tend to cluster among most vulnerable sectors of the population, particularly those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This study aimed to identify the clusters of health-related behaviours in 27 European countries and to examine the socioeconomic inequalities in these clusters.MethodsData were from Eurobarometer 72.3–2009, a cross-sectional survey of 27 European countries. The analyses were conducted in 2016. The main sections of the survey included questions pertaining to sociodemographic factors, health-related behaviours, and use of services. In this study, those aged 18 years and older were included. We selected five health-related behaviours, namely smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, frequent fresh fruit consumption, physical activity and dental check-ups. Socioeconomic position was indicated by education, subjective social status and difficulty in paying bills. Latent class analysis was conducted to explore the clusters of these five behaviours. Multinomial logistic regression model was used to examine the relationships between the clusters and socioeconomic positions adjusting for age, gender, marital status and urbanisation.ResultsThe eligible total population was 23,842. Latent class analysis identified three clusters; healthy, moderate and risky clusters in this European population. Individuals with the lowest socioeconomic position were more likely to have risky and moderate clusters than healthy cluster compared to those with the highest socioeconomic position.ConclusionsThere were clear socioeconomic gradients in clusters of health-related behaviours. The findings highlight the importance of adopting interventions that address multiple health risk behaviours and policies that tackle the social determinants of health-related behaviours.
Highlights
Modifiable health-related behaviours tend to cluster among most vulnerable sectors of the population, those at the bottom of the social hierarchy
Modifiable health-related behaviours such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet, usually measured by fruit and vegetable consumption, and lack of physical activity have a major impact on a wide array of chronic conditions such as cancers, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and on related mortality [1,2,3]
This study aims to identify different clusters of healthrelated behaviours using nationally representative samples in 27 European countries, and to examine the relationships between these clusters and objective and subjective indicators of socioeconomic position
Summary
Modifiable health-related behaviours tend to cluster among most vulnerable sectors of the population, those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Modifiable health-related behaviours such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet, usually measured by fruit and vegetable consumption, and lack of physical activity have a major impact on a wide array of chronic conditions such as cancers, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and on related mortality [1,2,3]. This set of risk behaviours is correlated with oral health [4,5,6,7], which is related to the non-symptomatic use of dental services for check-ups [8, 9]. There are a number of methodological challenges for clustering of health risk behaviours [14]
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