Negative Self-Assessment of Health in Women: Association with Sociodemographic Characteristics, Physical Inactivity and Multimorbidity

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 19; no. 5; p. 2666
• Main Authors: Santos, Thays Angélica de Pinho, Guimarães, Rafael Alves, Pagotto, Valéria, Aredes, Natália Del' Angelo, Siqueira, Isabela Silva Levindo de, Rocha, Suiany Dias, Carrijo, Clarissa Irineu de Sousa, Rosso, Claci Fátima Weirich
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 25.02.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Adult; Back pain; Cardiovascular diseases; Chronic Disease; Confidence intervals; Cross-Sectional Studies; Developing countries; Diabetes mellitus; Female; Fruits; Health risks; Health services; Higher education; Humans; Hypercholesterolemia; Hypertension; LDCs; Lifestyles; Male; Mental disorders; Morbidity; Mortality; Multimorbidity; Polls & surveys; Population; Prevalence; Quality of life; Risk analysis; Risk factors; Sedentary Behavior; Self evaluation; Self-Assessment; Sociodemographics; Socioeconomic factors; Statistical analysis; Variables; Vegetables; Womens health; Brazil; health self-assessment; women’s health; chronic disease; healthy behavior; multimorbidity; primary care; morbidity
• ISSN: 1660-4601; 1661-7827; 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19052666

Women present a higher prevalence of negative self-assessment of health (NSAH) when compared to men. However, there is a gap in the literature of factors associated with NSAH in women from developing countries such as Brazil. In addition, few studies have assessed the magnitude of the association between multimorbidity and NSAH in this population. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the association between NSAH and sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle and multimorbidity in women from the Midwest region of Brazil. A study based on data from the National Health Survey, a household survey that investigated health situation, lifestyle and risk factors for chronic diseases in the adult population of Brazil, was held. Sampling was performed in multiple stages. The selected women answered a standardized questionnaire on sociodemographic data, self-assessment of health and potential determinants. Poisson regression was used to analyze the association between NSAH and sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle and multimorbidity. A significance level of 0.05% was established. The study included 4233 women. The prevalence of NSAH found was 6.0% (95% Confidence Interval [95% CI]: 5.1-7.0%). There was an association between NSAH and advancing age, low schooling, physical inactivity and multimorbidity. Furthermore, there was an association between NSAH and diseases/disorders such as chronic back pain, systemic arterial hypertension, mental disorders, depression, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, cancer, hypercholesterolemia and diabetes mellitus. The prevalence of NSAH was low. A strong association was found between this variable and multimorbidity. In addition, increased age, low schooling and physical inactivity were predictors of NSAH in women.