摘要：Objectives. We compared the health of public housing residents with other Boston residents through a random-digit-dial survey. Methods. We used data from the Boston Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System collected in 2001 and 2003 to make crude and demographically adjusted comparisons between public housing residents and other city residents on measures of health status, access and utilization, and health behaviors. Results. Public housing residents were more likely to report fair or poor overall health status, ever-diagnosed hypertension, current asthma, ever-diagnosed diabetes, obesity, disability, loss of 6 or more teeth, and feelings of depression for 15 days or more in the past month. Public housing residents were slightly more likely than others to be without health insurance or report financial barriers to medical care. Public housing residents reported more smoking and physical inactivity, less past-month binge drinking and past-year marijuana use, and similar levels of lifetime drug use. Conclusions. Public housing residents reported substantially poorer health than did other city residents across a variety of conditions but similar levels of access to and utilization of health care. Public health departments may be able to use established surveys to measure health among public housing residents. Residents of public housing are more likely than the community at large to be poor and members of a racial or ethnic minority, factors frequently associated with poorer health. Despite a greater potential for disease burden in this population, there have been few descriptions of the overall health status of public housing residents. The majority of studies on the health of public housing residents have been limited to single health outcomes, including breast cancer screening, 1 – 5 mental health in elderly residents, 6 , 7 HIV risk among women, 8 , 9 and physical activity levels. 10 , 11 Some studies have examined measures of health care access and utilization 12 or health outcomes associated with the physical conditions of public housing, including child blood lead levels, 13 respiratory health, 14 , 15 and child injury risk. 15 The only report we found that addressed a range of health issues among public housing residents was an abbreviated article by Rivo and Gray, who reported on a demonstration project conducted in Washington, DC, that sought to reduce chronic disease risk among predominantly Black public housing residents. 16 A second objective of their study was to assess whether public housing residents experienced greater chronic disease risk than did the general population. Data from a health questionnaire administered to public housing residents were compared with a District-wide sample of Black residents interviewed through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Questionnaire results suggested that Black public housing residents had a much higher prevalence of chronic disease risk factors than did the general population in the city. Both men and women in public housing reported twice the prevalence of hypertension and smoking compared with other city residents. Women living in public housing reported twice the prevalence of obesity and more than 3 times the prevalence of diabetes compared with Black women living in the city. We found no previous description of a population-based health survey of persons whose housing was entirely or partially supported by public funding (including both residents of public housing developments and those who lived in private residences subsidized by voucher programs such as Section 8). We compared the overall health of residents living in publicly supported housing with the health of other city residents in the city of Boston with data from a local population-based health department survey based on the BRFSS, an established surveillance system that is conducted in every state in the United States. 17
