A jailed family member may increase risks for kids' adult health, according to a recent study.

Researchers from Brown University's School of Public Health found that people who grew up in a household where a member was incarcerated have a 16 percent greater risk of experiencing poor health quality than adults who did not have a family member sent to prison.

"These people were children when this happened, and it was a significant disruptive event," Annie Gjelsvik, lead author of the study, said in a statement. "That disruptive event has long-term adverse consequences."

Gjelsvik and her colleagues collected and analyzed data gathered from more than 81,000 adults who responded to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, a standardized national assessment of health. In 2009 and 2010, 12 states and the District of Columbia included questions about childhood adversity, including this question about the first 18 years of life: "Did you live with anyone who served time or was sentenced to serve time in a prison, jail or other correctional facility?"

Study participants were asked how many days out of the last month they experienced bad mental or physical health. If the total exceeded 14 days their overall health quality was considered poor.

Of the cohort, 4.5 percent said they grew up in a household where an adult family member was incarcerated. The proportion rose to 6.5 percent when the total sample was statistically weighted to accurately represent the adult population of each state.

They found that among those exposed to an incarceration in their family during childhood, there was a 16 percent greater risk of poor adult health quality.

Last May, in a separate paper based on the same data, Gjelsvik's team found that people with family incarcerations in their youth were more likely as adults to engage in smoking and heavy drinking, after controlling for demographics and additional adverse childhood events.

Researchers said the findings leave open questions because they did not measure which family member was sent to prison, when, for what reason, or for how long.

But the overall findings argue against sentencing policies such as mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders, Gjelsvik said. Incarceration can be necessary, but greater appropriate use of alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenders, such as drug courts, could spare some innocent children from a lifetime of reduced health.

"I'm not saying don't incarcerate people," she said. "But we need to allow our system to use judgment and to use innovative and evidence-based programs."

The findings were recently published in the Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved.