Positive and negative affect are both associated with health outcomes. Using validated measures, we examined associations between affect, self-reported measures of health, and objective measures of systemic inflammation in a cross-sectional sample of outpatient subjects recruited from an urban county hospital. Participants (n=1055) recruited from the Grady Trauma Project in Atlanta, GA underwent standardized interviews including self-report measures of psychiatric symptoms and physical health. A subset (n=246) consented to an assay of serum C-reactive protein (CRP). Regression models including positive affect as the predictor variable with covariates of age, gender, income, trauma load, depression and PTSD symptoms, were significantly associated with physical health domain scales of the Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36) of general health (R(2)=0.212; p