High Health Status - Women

High Health Status - Women in United States

United States

Self-reported health status is a measure of how individuals perceive their own health. Health status is an overall health and well-being measure used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to summarize and gauge progress toward achieving Healthy People 2030 objectives. It is a measure of health-related quality of life and is not limited to specific health conditions or outcomes, but instead is influenced by life experiences, the health of others in a person’s life, support from family and friends and other holistic factors affecting well-being.

Research shows that those with “poor” self-reported health status have mortality risk double that of those with ”excellent” self-reported health status. The association between health status and mortality makes this measure a good predictor of future mortality rates.

The prevalence of women ages 18-44 who report “very good” or “excellent“ health is higher among:

• Those ages 18-24 compared with those ages 25-44.
• Non-Hispanic white women compared with women of other races and ethnicities.
• Those with higher levels of education and income compared with those with lower levels of education and income.
• Women living in metropolitan areas compared with those in non-metropolitan areas.

More years of schooling are associated with better self-reported health status. This may be due in part to the fact that those with higher education have fewer chronic conditions. Economic resources and jobs with healthier working conditions and benefits are also associated with better health status.

The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends implementing high-quality center-based early childhood education programs in order to improve health. These programs improve health, promote health equity and are associated with narrower educational achievement gaps, especially for children in low-income or racial and ethnic minority communities. 

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Cialani, Catia, and Reza Mortazavi. 2020. “The Effect of Objective Income and Perceived Economic Resources on Self-Rated Health.” International Journal for Equity in Health 19 (1): 196. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-020-01304-2.

Cutler, David, and Adriana Lleras-Muney. 2007. “Education and Health.” Policy Brief #9 9. Ann Arbor, MI: National Poverty Center, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at University of Michigan. http://www.npc.umich.edu/publications/policy_briefs/brief9/.

DeSalvo, Karen B., Nicole Bloser, Kristi Reynolds, Jiang He, and Paul Muntner. 2006. “Mortality Prediction with a Single General Self-Rated Health Question.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 21 (3): 267. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2005.00291.x.

Lorem, Geir, Sarah Cook, David A. Leon, Nina Emaus, and Henrik Schirmer. 2020. “Self-Reported Health as a Predictor of Mortality: A Cohort Study of Its Relation to Other Health Measurements and Observation Time.” Scientific Reports 10 (December): 4886. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61603-0.

Lundborg, Petter. 2012. “The Health Returns to Schooling—What Can We Learn from Twins?” Journal of Population Economics 26 (2): 673–701. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-012-0429-5.

Quesnel–Vallée, Amélie. 2007. “Self-Rated Health: Caught in the Crossfire of the Quest for ‘True’ Health?” International Journal of Epidemiology 36 (6): 1161–64. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dym236.

Ramon, Ismaila, Sajal K. Chattopadhyay, W. Steven Barnett, Robert A. Hahn, and The Community Preventive Services Task Force. 2018. “Early Childhood Education to Promote Health Equity: A Community Guide Economic Review.” Journal of Public Health Management and Practice 24 (1). https://doi.org/10.1097/PHH.0000000000000557.