Government public housing health needs assessment: focus on race, ethnicity, and the older adult: background, methods, and demographics.

St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers of New York initiated a study in 2009 to assess the health needs of residents of New York City (NYC) municipal housing at the Robert Fulton public housing complex in Manhattan. The aim of this project was to provide valid data on perceived health services needs of the residents of a NYC housing project. These data may also be used to support hospital and community collaborative strategic decisions for developing resident-appropriate health and social services and would be valuable for use in formulating policies and programs by other interested nonprofit health and social services organizations and government. We designed a 28-item instrument and pilot tested it with our research team and members of the population under study. The English and Spanish surveys were designed as an in-person surveyor-administered instruments addressing four domains: demographics, access and barriers to health care services, risk behaviors, and perceived health needs. The sampling was an apartment-level stratified random sampling. A 20%, 188 apartment sample was drawn from the population of 944 housing units. Our response rate was 92% (173/188 apartments). Background methods, and demographic results are reported in this article. A second article will report on the needs assessment results.