PROJECT 5:Health Status of Adults and the Elderly in Malaysia This project will design and field the Adult Health Supplement (AHS) Third Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS-3) that will collect a wide array of health information on all adult and elderly respondents. This information will complement the substantial set of data on family background, demographic characteristics, and socioeconomic status of respondents that has been collected in the two previous rounds (MFLS-1 in 1976 and MFLS-2 in 1988) and will be collected in 1999 as part of MFLS-3. The third wave of the MFLS has recently been funded by NICHD and will cover the collection of household data on socioeconomic status, work and family life, and intergenerational transfers; detailed information on community characteristics; and anthropometry and a limited range of subjective health data on adults covering activities of daily living and perceived health status. By building on the funded NICHD project, the AHS will represent a highly cost-effective undertaking and will expand substantially the usefulness and value of one of the most widely used series of demographic/socioeconomic surveys in a developing country. The main aim of this project is to collect health information from a potential sample of 23,464 adult respondents in MFLS-3, including 4,266 individuals aged 50 and over. The AHS will collect both objective and subjective assessments of respondents' health. The new objective health measures to be collected included blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose levels, lung capacity, and assessments of physical mobility and functional limitations, as well as an objective assessment of the respondents' overall health by a trained nurse who will administer the objective health tests. Subjective measures will include more reports on symptoms and diagnosis of key chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, emphysema, and coronary artery disease. Information will also be collected on important health-related factors, such as smoking. The specific measures have been chosen to reflect the most prevalent health conditions in Malaysia and to parallel the RAND adult health data available for Macedonia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. The design and implementation of the MFLS-3 adult health supplement will build on these and other previous RAND data collection efforts, as well as work by Malaysian health researchers.
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