Three top Canadian and personal health concerns of a random sample of NovaScotian women

We sought to understand the subjective reports of women's health concerns. A randomly dialled telephone survey was conducted resulting in a sample of 458 women (Caucasian/European =302, Native/Aboriginal = 81, Black = 75), ag ed 18-81. women were asked in an open-ended format to list their three top health concerns for themselves and then for Canadian women. Responses were recorded verbatim and categorized into one of nine mutually exclusive healt h concern categories. The three main health concerns for Canadian women wer e: Psychosocial Issues, Other Specific Illnesses, and Cancer. The three mos t important personal health concerns were Psychosocial Issues, Other Specif ic Illnesses, and Heart and Related Diseases. Few ethnic differences were n oted. Results suggest that it is important to recognize and attempt to alle viate health concerns about stress and depression, which are nor usually co nsidered as being major health problems by health care professionals.