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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Ho-Jui Tung, Center for General Education, National Defense Medical Center, No.161,Section 6,Min-Chuan East Road ,Taipei 114, Taiwan, Republic of China, Taipei, Taiwan and Chi-Ming Cheng, School of Public Health, National Defense Medical Center, No.161,Section 6,Min-Chuan East Road ,Taipei 114, Taiwan, Republic of China, Taipei, Taiwan, 886-2-87923100#18461, mitin-t28@yahoo.com.tw.

Self-rated Health (SRH), a subjective measure of health, has been proved a useful predictor of many objective measures of health status. Research on this global measure of health also points out that people incorporate their health changes when rating their own state of health, which means that Self-rated Health actually reflects a person's “Health Trajectory.” Drawn on a representative panel-design survey of Taiwanese elders aged 60 and over in 1989, the purpose of this study was to identify trajectory patterns of SRH over a 10-year period (Follow-up survey were conducted in 1993, 1996, and 1999). In order to minimize the effects of mortality selection faced by all longitudinal surveys, respondents' survival status at the end of each wave was incorporated as another health status outcome. Results show that SRH was a good predictor of mortality over the 10-year period. Among the 689 respondents who rated their health as poor in 1989, 54.3% of them had died by 1999. However, only 32.1% of those who rated their health as fair or good had died over the same period. In terms of health transitions, 7 trajectory patterns (Stable Good Health, Stable Poor Health, Declining, Improving, Decline and Recovery, Improving and Decline, and Fluctuating) were identified. The most frequent pattern was the Declining (40.6%), followed by the Stable Good Health (26.9%), the Stable Poor Health (12.4%), The Decline and Recovery (7.6%), the Improving and Decline (6.7%), The Improving (3.1%), and The Fluctuating (2.7%).

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