Department of Family Medicine & Continuing Care, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore, Singapore.
Family Medicine, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Singapore.
Int J Equity Health. 2018 Apr 2;17(1):39. doi: 10.1186/s12939-018-0751-y.
It is well-established that low socioeconomic status (SES) influences one's health status, morbidity and mortality. Housing type has been used as an indicator of SES and social determinant of health in some studies. In Singapore, home ownership is among the highest in the world. Citizens who have no other housing options are offered heavily subsidised rental housings. Residents staying in such rental housings are characterised by low socioeconomic status. Our aim is to review studies on the association between staying in public rental housing in Singapore and health status.
A PubMed and Scopus search was conducted in January 2017 to identify suitable articles published from 1 January 2000 to 31 January 2017. Only studies that were done on Singapore public rental housing communities were included for review. A total of 14 articles including 4 prospective studies, 8 cross-sectional studies and 2 retrospective cohort studies were obtained for the review. Topics addressed by these studies included: (1) Health status; (2) Health seeking behaviour; (3) Healthcare utilisation.
Staying in public rental housing was found to be associated with poorer health status and outcomes. They had lower participation in health screening, preferred alternative medicine practitioners to western-trained doctors for primary care, and had increased hospital utilisation. Several studies performed qualitative interviews to explore the causes of disparity and concern about cost was one of the common cited reason.
Staying in public rental housing appears to be a risk marker of poorer health and this may have important public health implications. Understanding the causes of disparity will require more qualitative studies which in turn will guide interventions and the evaluation of their effectiveness in improving health outcome of this sub-population of patients.
低社会经济地位（SES）会影响一个人的健康状况、发病率和死亡率，这一点已得到充分证实。在一些研究中，住房类型被用作 SES 的指标和健康的社会决定因素。在新加坡，住房自有率位居世界前列。没有其他住房选择的公民可以获得大量补贴的租赁住房。居住在这种租赁住房中的居民的社会经济地位较低。我们的目的是回顾关于新加坡居住在公共租赁住房与健康状况之间关系的研究。
我们于 2017 年 1 月在 PubMed 和 Scopus 上进行了检索，以确定从 2000 年 1 月 1 日至 2017 年 1 月 31 日期间发表的合适文章。只有在新加坡公共租赁住房社区进行的研究才被纳入审查范围。共获得 14 篇文章，包括 4 项前瞻性研究、8 项横断面研究和 2 项回顾性队列研究。这些研究涵盖的主题包括：（1）健康状况；（2）寻求健康行为；（3）医疗保健利用。
研究发现，居住在公共租赁住房与较差的健康状况和结果有关。他们参与健康筛查的比例较低，更倾向于选择传统医学从业者而不是接受过西方培训的医生作为初级保健医生，并且住院利用率较高。一些研究进行了定性访谈，以探讨造成差异的原因，对费用的担忧是其中一个常见原因。
居住在公共租赁住房似乎是健康状况较差的风险标志，这可能对公共卫生具有重要意义。要了解造成差异的原因，需要进行更多的定性研究，这反过来又将指导干预措施的制定，并评估其在改善这一患者亚群的健康结果方面的有效性。
