Research article
Health Indicators for Military, Veteran, and Civilian Women

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2012.01.006Get rights and content

Background

Women who have served in the military are a rapidly growing population. No previous studies have compared directly their health status to that of civilians.

Purpose

To provide estimates of several leading U.S. health indicators by military service status among women.

Methods

Data were obtained from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, a U.S. population-based study. Health outcomes were compared by military status using multivariable logistic regression among the female participants (274,399 civilians, 4221 veterans, 661 active duty, and 995 National Guard or Reserves [NG/R]). Data were analyzed in August 2011.

Results

Veterans reported poorer general health and greater incidence of health risk behaviors, mental health conditions, and chronic health conditions than civilian women. Active duty women reported better access to health care, better physical health, less engagement in health risk behaviors, and greater likelihood of having had a recent Pap than civilian women. Women from the NG/R were comparable to civilians across most health domains, although they had a greater likelihood of being overweight or obese and reporting a depressive and anxiety disorder.

Conclusions

Compared with civilian women, NG/R women rated their health and access to health care similarly and active duty women rated theirs better on several domains, but veterans consistently reported poorer health.

Section snippets

Methods

Data were used from the CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a national telephone survey conducted annually to monitor health conditions and risk behaviors of U.S. adults.16 The survey uses state-level sampling plans and weighting to obtain a representative sample from the population of households with telephones within each state. Each respondent is assigned a final sampling weight based on his or her probability of selection and a post-stratification factor to ensure that

Results

All demographic characteristics were associated with military status, except marital status (Table 1). Active duty women were younger, and both active duty and National Guard or Reserves (NG/R) women were less likely to be Caucasian than civilian and veteran women. Active duty and veteran women were more highly educated, had higher incomes, and were more likely to live in the Southern U.S. than civilians. NG/R women were more likely to live in the Midwest than the other three groups.

Discussion

This article is the first to present population-based estimates of multiple health indicators by military status for women across the U.S. Veterans reported consistently poorer health compared with the other three groups, including poorer general health, greater likelihood of health risk behaviors (e.g., smoking), and greater likelihood of chronic conditions and mental health disorders. For two indicators only—health insurance and clinical breast exams—veterans reported faring better than

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