Health education and health promotion are driven based on understanding lifestyle practices of a
population. The aims of the study are to construct health care demand and health promotion models, which are
appropriate to the Jamaican population, and to determine the predictors of health care demand. The current
research extracted a sub-sample of 16,619 respondents from the survey, the Jamaica Survey of Living
Conditions (JSLC), based on those who indicated having sought medical care in Jamaica. The sub-sample was
taken from a nationally cross-sectional survey of 25,018 respondents from the 14 parishes in Jamaica. It was
administered by the Planning Institute of Jamaica and the Statistical Institute of Jamaica between July and
October 2002. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. Majority of the respondents did
not have private health insurance coverage (88.2%); 53.6% had a partner; and 35.2% were poor; 50.4% had at
most primary level education. The predictors of health care demand are: health care demand in previous
period (t-1) (OR = 0.049); illness (OR = 10.338); injury (OR = 2.370); social class (middle class: OR = 1.135;
wealthy: OR = 1.394); per capita consumption (OR = 1.099); union status (OR = 0.845); gender (OR = 2.221);
private health insurance coverage (OR = 1.942); age (OR = 1.022) and educational attainment of
respondents (OR = 1.315). This study can be used to model critical health promotion emphasis in Jamaica, and
any other country with similar socio-demographic and political characteristics.