Abstract
Objective
To examine health concerns among community college (CC) students by (1) identifying and coding the self-reported health issues facing CC students and (2) examining demographic and psychosocial variables associated with health categories. Participants: 946 CC students (Mage = 26.37) recruited from January 2017 to February 2017 who completed a screening survey for a larger study. Students were asked to “List three health issues facing Community College students today.” Methods: Health issues were coded into broad categories and subcategories. Results: Among the 2,601 health issues reported, one-third were medical health (36%), one-third were mental health (33%), with substance use (14%), other health (14%), and access to health care (3%) also reported. The most commonly identified health issues were “general medical issues,” “stress,” “depression,” and “sleep.” Conclusions: Programmatic efforts to support CC students and promote prevention/intervention strategies for mental health, sleep, substance use, access to health care, and general medical concerns, remain essential.
Acknowledgments
The content of this manuscript is solely the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIAAA or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We thank Theresa Walter for her assistance with data coding.
Conflict of interest disclosure
The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of University of Washington.