title: Disparities in Whites' versus Blacks' self-rated health: social status, health-care services, and health behaviors.
abstract: Using 2009 National Health Interview Survey data, we examined how social-status factors, variables describing health services, and health-related behaviors explained self-rated health among Black adults and among White adults. We wanted to evaluate whether self-rated health's relationships with these three sets of variables were conditional on race. Our results overall indicated that social-status, health-care-services, and health-behaviors variables are important to the explanation of both groups' self-rated health. But in this study, when all social-status, health-care-services, and health-behaviors variables were controlled, Black respondents' self-reported health did not differ, on average, from White respondents'. Such a finding firmly suggests that the three sets of variables partially explain disparities in the groups' self-reported health. In the end, our results showed racial health disparities to be partially explained by racial differences in distribution of health resources and health behaviors.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Work, University of Alabama, Box 870314, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0314, USA. clo@ua.edu
authors.forename: Celia C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Lo
authors.forename: Rebecca J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Howell
authors.forename: Tyrone C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Cheng
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D044383:Black People / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006296:Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D006304:Health Status; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012647:Self-Assessment; D012923:Social Class; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001741:Black or African American