“Excuse me teacher-what does health mean?”: Use of a self-reported health tool to measure the health of urban 1st and 4th graders

In order to obtain an accurate measure of health it is important to obtain self-reports whenever possible. When measuring child health, a self-report is frequently used in conjunction with parent report to obtain a comprehensive picture of the child's health. Although child self-reported health is important, there are few tools developed and validated for use in children, especially children who have not yet reached adolescence. The Health Information Improvement Project (HIIP) was designed to combine self-reported health, biometric measurements and parent interviews to obtain a comprehensive picture of the health of a sample of diverse, inner-city elementary school students. In preparation for data collection, we reviewed the available child self-reported health measures and selected the Child Health and Illness Profile- Child Edition (CHIP-CE) for use in measuring the general health of a sample (n=386) of first (6-7 year olds) and fourth graders (10-11 years old) in an urban population. The CHIP-CE contains 5 domains relevant to child health: Risk Avoidance, Comfort, Resilience, Achievement and Satisfaction. Each domain is measured on a Likert scale (1=lowest, 5=highest). This presentation reviews the available child self-reported health tools, details our experiences and challenges with administering the CHIP-CE and discusses the results. Overall scores on the CHIP domains ranged from 3.7 - 4.2, with significant differences (p<.05) by grade, FRL status, gender and race/ethnicity. We present the results of the CHIP and its associated domains by gender, grade and race/ethnicity and the implications for future interventions to address the health of this young urban population.