Determinantes da autopercepção de saúde entre mulheres freqüentadoras do Centro de Práticas Esportivas da Universidade de São Paulo (CEPEUSP)

Abstract

Health is one of the most important elements of the individuals' life quality. The researches headed for women regarding this theme used to focus on, almost exclusively, the problems of reproductive and gynecological diseases. Though, nowadays other aspects are subject of studies, due to significant changes of women's role in the contemporary society. Besides great portion of the feminine population is on the labor market, they continue taking responsibilities of maternity and family care. In this context, self-rated health status has been applied as one way of evaluating health condition, reflecting several aspects of lifestyle. The aim of this study is to investigate socioeconomic, demographic, nutritional, health and lifestyle determinants that interfere in self-rated health status among women that frequent the Sport Practices Center at the University of São Paulo (CEPEUSP). This work was accomplished under PRINUTHA activities and characterized with a transversal exploring study. The sample was composed by 162 adult women and, in order to associate self-rated health status with factors that could influence it, a logistic binary regression was estimated, defining as dependent variable the self-rated health status and, as independent variables: age, education, nutritional status, quality of the food consumption, intestinal habit and physical activity. The age average was of 31,46 (±12,41) years and the education 13,77 (±2,68) years. It was observed that 87% of the women self-evaluated their health positively, 33,4% were overweight, 41,4% presented bad intestinal habit, 78,4% needed to improve their diets and 69,7% made physical exercises. The nutritional status and the physical activity were shown statistically significant determinants (p <0,001 and p=0,050, respectively), and those women with normal weight presented a probability of 92,7% and the physically of 90,1% of having a good perception of health. Therefore, results corroborate public policy and the programs established by worldwide and national organizations with respect to the basic guidelines for a healthy lifestyle.