Abstract

Doaâ??a Ahmed Saleh*, Sahar Yassin, Hend Aly Sabry and Madiha Said Abdelrazik

Socio-economic inequalities have been shown to be associated with disease burden in developing as well as developed countries. The aim of the study was (1) to test the association between family socio-demographic risks and health problems, and (2) to identify a “family sociodemographic risk line” above which families are at significant risk of developing health problems. A cross sectional community-based study was conducted in two districts in Cairo, Egypt. Socio-demographic status was assessed for 5400 families by a family sociodemographic risk score (FSRS) calculated according to the crowding index, family size, age and sex structure, education, economic dependency, smoking and addiction. The continuous FSRS (range: 0 - 12) was transformed into 5 quintiles. Association between FSRS and 21 health problems was done for the studied families using unconditional logistic regression analysis. It was found that increased FSRS was associated with a progressive increase in the prevalence of family health problems. The risk of health problems was significantly higher for the 5th compared to the 1st FSRS quintile families (odds ratio: 1.8 and 95% confidence interval: 1.41 – 2.35) which represented about 15% (784/5400) of the studied families. These would be considered the priority families for health services. Thus, the FSRS “7” was considered the “family socio-demographic risk line”.