Socioenvironmental factors and behaviors associated with negative self-rated health in Brazil.

Geraldo Jose Ferrari Junior,Érico Pereira Gomes Felden,Clarissa Stefani Teixeira

doi:10.1590/1413-81232021269.18172020

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the factors associated with negative self-rated health in Brazil. The sample consisted of 5,259 adults from five representative capitals of the five regions of Brazil. Data collection was achieved in the following municipalities: Palmas (North Region), João Pessoa (Northeast Region), Goiânia (Central-West Region), Vitória (Southeast Region) and Florianópolis (South Region). For the analysis of the data, Binary Logistic Regression for determine the factors associated with negative self-rated health was used. Negative self-rated health was identified in 31.43% of Brazilians. The factors that were significantly associated were bad air quality, does not have public spaces for leisure, older age group, insufficient salary to cover expenses, a rare practice of physical exercises, does not perform healthy eating, active commuting for study or employment and commuting time for above 30 minutes, dissatisfaction with health services and still, not working, not looking for a job and finally, reside in some Brazilian regions. The study presents the importance of socioenvironmental and behavioral factors for the self-rated health of Brazilian adults, as well as it shows high rates of negative self-rated health compared to other studies.

Highlights

MethodSelf-assessment of health is a measure that expresses the general health condition, is considered a critical aspect of individual well-being[1] and has been widely used in public health[2]
The sample consisted of 5,259 adults from all Brazilian regions, 1,023 from Florianópolis, 1,026 from Goiânia, 1,036 from João Pessoa, 1,010 from Palmas and 1,067 from Vitória
The results showed that one-third of the adults in the sample (n=1,644) had negative self-rated health

Summary

Introduction

MethodSelf-assessment of health is a measure that expresses the general health condition, is considered a critical aspect of individual well-being[1] and has been widely used in public health[2]. The interest in research on the health of large populations is growing in several countries and comes from the need to understand how different factors affect health.In this perspective, the studies point to some relevant factors when analyzing people’s self-rated health’s such as health limitations[7,8], lifestyle[9], physical and social environment[7,10,11,12], sociodemographic[11] and individual circumstances[9,13]. Studies in developing African country[14,15] have presented other factors, such as age, sex, and individual health behaviors that may contribute negatively to health. These previous investigations allowed the reflection of theoretical models to a better understanding of what is associated with the negative self-rated health of adults. The recent review by Moor et al.[2] reports greater importance of factors of material/structural (proximal) living conditions for the explanation of self-rated health due to its more significant direct (indirect) and shared (indirect) effect by psychosocial and behavioral factors

Objectives

Results

Conclusion