慢性病老年人的非正式照护与健康行为
Informal care and health behaviors among elderly people with chronic diseases.
作者信息
Wu Hong, Lu Naiji
机构信息
School of Medicine and Health Management, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 13 Hangkong road, Qiaokou District, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
出版信息
J Health Popul Nutr. 2017 Dec 6;36(1):40. doi: 10.1186/s41043-017-0117-x.
BACKGROUND
The mechanism by which social relationships influence health can be interpreted as a social network regulating one's health behaviors. Based on the hypothesis that relatives, friends, or neighbors are sources of social support and may monitor one's health behaviors, researchers have gotten significant and consistent results that a social network can regulate health behaviors. However, few empirical studies have been conducted to examine the role of informal care in the regulation of health behaviors, especially for elderly individuals with chronic diseases that can be controlled by healthy behaviors. This paper researched the effects of informal care on health behaviors-smoking control, dietetic regulation, weight control, and maintenance of exercise-among elderly patients with chronic diseases in China who are facing the challenge of aging.
METHODS
We used the propensity score matching method to control the impacts of a very rich set of family and individual characteristics. The 2011-2012 national baseline data of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) was used.
RESULTS
Our findings showed that informal care could significantly help improve the health behaviors of elderly people. Informal care could improve the compliance of smoking control and dietetic regulation significantly. Elderly people with informal care smoked less and consumed more meals per day. For weight control, informal care helped decrease the possibility of weight gain of elderly people, but its impacts were not significant for BMI and weight loss. Last, for the elders, informal care could only help increase the probability of walking exercise; however, there was no significant result for moderate exercise.
CONCLUSIONS
Findings from this study highlight the importance of informal care among elderly people. Our results appeal to policy makers who aim to control chronic diseases that they should take informal care into account and provide appropriate policies to meet the demand of informal care for elderly people.
背景
社会关系影响健康的机制可被解释为一个调节个人健康行为的社会网络。基于亲属、朋友或邻居是社会支持来源且可能监督个人健康行为这一假设，研究人员已得出显著且一致的结果，即社会网络能够调节健康行为。然而，很少有实证研究考察非正式照护在健康行为调节中的作用，尤其是对于患有可通过健康行为控制的慢性病的老年人。本文研究了非正式照护对面临老龄化挑战的中国慢性病老年患者健康行为（吸烟控制、饮食调节、体重控制和运动维持）的影响。
方法
我们使用倾向得分匹配法来控制一系列丰富的家庭和个人特征的影响。采用了中国健康与养老追踪调查（CHARLS）2011 - 2012年的全国基线数据。
结果
我们的研究结果表明，非正式照护能够显著帮助改善老年人的健康行为。非正式照护能显著提高吸烟控制和饮食调节的依从性。接受非正式照护的老年人吸烟较少，且每天用餐次数更多。对于体重控制，非正式照护有助于降低老年人体重增加的可能性，但对身体质量指数（BMI）和体重减轻的影响不显著。最后，对于老年人来说，非正式照护只能帮助增加步行锻炼的概率；然而，对于适度运动则没有显著效果。
结论
本研究结果凸显了非正式照护在老年人中的重要性。我们的结果呼吁旨在控制慢性病的政策制定者应考虑到非正式照护，并提供适当政策以满足老年人对非正式照护的需求。
Zotero 插件