Social networks and the functional health status of the poor: a secondary analysis of data from the National Survey of Personal Health Practices and Consequences.

This study uses data from the Wave I of the National Survey of Personal Health Practices and Consequences (N = 3025) to examine the relationship between social networks and the health status of the poor. No single category of networks was found to be consistently predictive of health status among the poor. The number of close friends, satisfaction with number of close ties, frequency of contact with network ties and church attendance were all significantly related to health status, but in no case were sufficient to bring health status levels of the poor up to the level of the nonpoor.