Vuong Quan-Hoang
School of Business, FPT University, Hanoi, Vietnam.
J Public Health Res. 2017 Apr 13;6(1):788. doi: 10.4081/jphr.2017.788.
Over the past 15 years or so, in Vietnam, a phenomenon has steadily grown more and more widespread: the forming of co-located patients communities. Poor patients choose to live together, seeking/lending supports from/to one another. Despite the undeniable existence of these communities, little is researched or known about how co-located patients perceive the value of what they receive as cluster members, or how they assess their future connection to the communities they are living in.
The study employs multiple logistic regressions method to investigate relationships between factors such as perceived satisfaction from community-provided financial means, reported health improvements, along with patients' short-and longer-term commitments to these communities.
The results suggest meaningful empirical relationships: 1) between, on one hand, gender, perceived values and sustainability of patients communities, financial stress faced by patients and the financial benefits they received from the community, and, on the other hand, their propensity to stay connected to it; and 2) between economic conditions, length of stay with a community, general level of satisfaction, health improvements on one hand and long-term commitment to these communities on the other hand.
Patients who choose to stick to co-location clusters do so for an economic reason: finding means to fight their financial hardship. This may suggest a degree of complication higher than one would have thought in dealing with poor patients from a social point of view. Concretely, the majority of the public only focuses on charity programs and in-king donations, while ignoring the more sustainable - and, at the same time, more complicated - alternative which is to create suitable income-generating jobs for patient. In addition, patients are not only those who seek to ask for supports but can potentially be the donors contributing to the sustainability of those voluntary communities.
在过去15年左右的时间里，在越南，一种现象日益普遍：形成了聚居患者群体。贫困患者选择住在一起，相互寻求/提供支持。尽管这些群体的存在不可否认，但对于聚居患者如何看待他们作为群体成员所获得的价值，或者他们如何评估自己与所居住社区的未来联系，却鲜有研究或了解。
本研究采用多元逻辑回归方法，调查诸如对社区提供的经济手段的满意度、报告的健康改善情况等因素，以及患者对这些社区的短期和长期承诺之间的关系。
结果表明存在有意义的实证关系：1）一方面，性别、患者群体的感知价值和可持续性、患者面临的经济压力以及他们从社区获得的经济利益，与另一方面，他们与社区保持联系的倾向之间的关系；2）经济状况、在社区的居住时间、总体满意度、健康改善情况与对这些社区的长期承诺之间的关系。
选择坚持聚居群体的患者是出于经济原因：寻找应对经济困难的方法。从社会角度来看，这可能意味着在处理贫困患者问题时，其复杂性程度高于人们的想象。具体而言，大多数公众只关注慈善项目和慈善捐赠，而忽略了更具可持续性——同时也更复杂——的选择，即为患者创造合适的创收工作。此外，患者不仅是寻求支持的人，还可能是为这些志愿社区的可持续性做出贡献的捐赠者。
