Impact of economic decline on community heath indicators

The Speak to Your Health! Community Survey is a biennial county-wide study in Genesee County, Michigan, addressing a broad range of health issues and other issues of community interest. The survey is developed by a collaboration of community and university partners using consensus process and guided by community-based research principles. Each survey wave includes standard health and community health topics, as well as items that rotate between survey iterations and new topics of partnership interest. Given recent economic trends, the partnership was interested in examining the impact of individual economic decline on health indicators in the 2009 survey wave. Controlling for educational attainment and current income level, the degree to which an individual's financial situation was worse this year than it was in the previous year was related to worse self reported general health, more days in the past month when poor health interfered with daily activities, worse self reported mental health, more days in the past month when poor mental health interfered with daily activities, as well as higher levels of self-reported stress and depressive symptoms (N = 1700). These results suggest that socio-economic fluctuations influence health above and beyond socio-economic indicators such as educational attainment and current income.