Education and Health: Examining Urban Data Addressing Key Healthy People 2020 Objectives

Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicators address objectives falling short in 2010, including reducing health disparities. For the first time since the development of HP objectives, “social determinants” has been added to the Topic Areas list, with an emphasis on improving high school graduation rates. This presentation will examine the relationship between educational attainment and selected health outcomes.

Data for this analysis are from PHMC's 2010 Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey, a random landline and cell phone survey including 4399 Philadelphia adults. Survey results show 11.5% of adults have less than high school graduation, 37.3% high school graduation and 51.2% further education. Chronic conditions are significantly related to education. Diabetes has the strongest effects, as 23.2% without HS graduation, 13.9% with HS graduation, and 10.4% with additional education have diabetes. Logistic regression analysis controlling for age, race and poverty did not substantially lessen the impact of educational attainment on diabetes. Education was also significantly associated with healthy behaviors such as increased exercise and reduced sugary beverage consumption. Additionally, childhood obesity significantly decreased as adult educational attainment increased (38.7% [less than HS], 26.3% [HS graduation], and 22% [further education]). There was no significant relationship between adult educational attainment and adult obesity between less than HS graduation (34.2% obese) and HS graduation (35.5% obese), although additional education did have an impact (29% obese). Taken together, these findings demonstrate the independent effects of low educational attainment on health outcomes and highlight the value of including educational attainment as a primary public health objective.