Figure 5. Proportions of donors reporting “excellent” or “very good” health, according to race and education and comparable data for US white and African-American adults.

Bar heights indicate the proportion of donors reporting excellent or good health within four categories of educational attainment: less than high school, high school graduate, some college, or 4-year college graduate. Vertical lines atop the bars indicate ± 1 standard error. The last 8 bars are comparable data on self-reported health by educational attainment for US white and African-American adults aged 25–74 from the 2005–2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Systems as reported by Braveman et al (24). Standard errors are not provided for the US population estimates because they have been weighted to reflect the entire population. Sixteen donors with missing values for education or self-rated health status were omitted. After adjustment for education, white donors were more likely to report excellent or very good health than either African-American donors or donors of other races (p = 0.0034 and p = 0.0004, respectively). Overall, patterns of self-rated health status are similar for donors and US adults.