TY - JOUR T1 - How Much Time Do Adults Spend on Health-related Self-care? Results from the American Time Use Survey JF - The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine JO - J Am Board Fam Med SP - 380 LP - 390 DO - 10.3122/jabfm.2011.04.100260 VL - 24 IS - 4 AU - Daniel E. Jonas AU - Yoko Ibuka AU - Louise B. Russell Y1 - 2011/07/01 UR - http://www.jabfm.org/content/24/4/380.abstract N2 - Background: The amount of time individuals spend on health-related self-care is not known.Objective: The aim of this study was to describe how much time American adults reported spending on health-related self-care (eg, taking insulin, dressing a wound).Methods: We analyzed data from the first 5 years, 2003 to 2007, of the population-based American Time Use Survey. Of 64,310 respondents 25 years of age and older, 4267 reported 7022 episodes of health-related self-care on their survey day. We used descriptive statistics, weighted to represent US adults, to describe self-reported time and logit regressions to analyze the odds of engaging in self-care as a function of age, sex, race, and other characteristics. Because health status was collected only in 2006 to 2007, analyses were conducted separately for 2003 to 2007 and 2006 to 2007.Results: Of Americans 25 years of age and older, 6.6% engaged in health-related self-care each day. Among those reporting self-care, mean time reported was 90 minutes (median, 15 minutes); 20.6% reported 2 hours or more. Regressions for 2006 to 2007 show that people aged 75 or older were 3.9 times as likely (95% CI, 2.7–5.8) to report self-care as persons aged 25 to 44. Compared with persons in excellent health, those in fair health were 2.0 times as likely (95% CI, 1.4–2.8) and those in poor health were 3.7 times as likely (95% CI, 2.5–5.6) to report engaging in self-care. Nonworking disabled persons reported self-care 4 times (95% CI, 3.1–5.3) as often as employed persons. Sex, race/ethnicity, presence of children, and body mass index were also significant.Conclusions: Time spent on health-related self-care is disproportionately distributed across the population, with a larger amount of time reported by those in poor health (3.6 hours/week) and the nonworking disabled (3.2 hours/week). To provide patient-centered care and to promote optimal decisions about health-related time management when making recommendations for additional self-care tasks, clinicians need to talk to patients about how much time they are already spending on self-care. ER -