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Health attitudes and beliefs of the urban elderly.

THE HEALTH STATUS OF OLDER AMERICANS has attracted increasing Federal and public concern, particularly in the light of evidence that Medicare and Medicaid alone have accounted for 72 percent of the recent inflation in health care costs (1). Unfortunately, this increase in concern has not been paralleled by a proportionate increase in systematic attempts to explore specific health attitudes and behavior of the elderly-attempts that might lead to improvements in preventive health education and in the delivery of health services to this heterogenous population. The research reported here represents one such attempt. In the spring and summer of 1976, a survey and analysis was undertaken of the health knowledge, attitudes, and practices of a sample of noninstitutionalized older Americans living in a large metropolitan area-San Francisco, Calif. In view of the effect that socioeconomic status has been shown to have on health knowledge, attitudes, and practices (2a), middle class respondents and lower middle class respondents were compared in these respects with a smaller subsample of respondents living below the poverty line.