Public housing, public health: health needs of public housing tenants

Objectives: To determine the health needs of public housing tenants, measur ed in terms of self-reported health status, health risk factors and express ed need for health risk reduction intervention. Method: Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a randomly selected sam ple of public housing tenants in the Hunter Region of New South Wales. Results. Of 463 contactable tenants, 329 consented to participate in the st udy. Participants were 2.5 times more likely to rate their health as lair o r poor relative to the community generally, and visited a doctor twice as o ften. The prevalence of smoking was more than twice that of the community g enerally, and the prevalence of falls was approximately three times greater . Risk of injury due to domestic violence was approximately six times great er, and the risk of injury due to violence in other locations was more than double that in the community. Between a quarter and a half of the particip ants requested support to reduce their health risks. Conclusions: The findings suggest that public housing tenants are one of th e more severely health-compromised groups in the Australian community. Impl ications: An urgent need exists for public health initiatives that are dire cted at improving not only the current markedly poorer health status of pub lic housing tenants, but also the greater prevalence of health risk factors that predict a likely continuation of such differentials into the future.