| Abstract: | SUMMARY The Keokuk County Rural Health Study is a population-based, prospective study of environmental exposures and health status of a large randomly-selected sample of residents from each of three strata in one rural Iowa county. The study focuses on injury rates and respiratory disease; in addition, it monitors health care de-livery; geriatric, reproductive, and mental health; and other health outcomes. Injury and disease prevalence are investigated in relation to occupational, agricultural, and other environmental exposures. This paper describes the sampling method, the protocol, and the demographic profile of adult subjects of the first 400 households en-rolled in the study. Farmers were slightly younger than rural non-farmers and townspeople and more farmers had lived in the county all of their lives. Females were more highly educated than were males, and less than half as many female farmers had lived in the county all their lives than had male farmers. Net household income figures were complex and are shown in a graph in Table 1. |
