School of Aging Studies, College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, Sarasota-Manatee Campus, University of South Florida, Sarasota, FL 34243, USA.
School of Aging Studies, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Sep 27;17(19):7056. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17197056.
Population aging has led to an increased focus on the environmental context in which we age. While researchers have identified significant health benefits associated with built community features such as housing, transportation and outdoor spaces and buildings, less attention has focused on the correlates of healthy aging and other characteristics via the perspective of community-dwelling older adults. This study utilized cluster analysis to examine health-related subgroups of older adults ( = 598) in an age-friendly community located in the United States, of which nearly half of its residents are age 60 and older. Linear regression was used to associate the health clusters with perceptions of built environmental features and socio-demographics. Four distinct profiles were identified, with the greatest preference for housing and transportation found among those reporting poorer health compared to those reporting excellent health across multi-dimensional healthy aging measures. Perceptions on the importance of built environmental features were also found to vary by age, income and home accessibility status. Findings suggest that older adults' perceptions about built environmental features differ across health and home status as well as age and income, underscoring opportunities for public health action to better reach and engage older adults by life-course trajectories in age-friendly communities.
人口老龄化使得人们越来越关注我们所处的环境背景。虽然研究人员已经确定了与住房、交通和户外空间以及建筑物等社区特征相关的重要健康益处，但从社区居住的老年人的角度来看，关注健康老龄化和其他特征的相关性的研究却较少。本研究利用聚类分析方法，对位于美国的一个老年友好型社区中的老年人（=598 人）进行了研究，该社区近一半的居民年龄在 60 岁及以上。线性回归用于将健康群组与对建筑环境特征和社会人口统计学的看法联系起来。研究发现了四个不同的特征群组，与那些报告身体状况不佳的老年人相比，那些在多维健康老龄化指标中报告身体状况良好的老年人对住房和交通的偏好更大。此外，对建筑环境特征重要性的看法也因年龄、收入和家庭可达性状况而异。研究结果表明，老年人对建筑环境特征的看法因健康状况和家庭状况以及年龄和收入的不同而有所不同，这突显了公共卫生行动的机会，以便通过老年友好型社区的生命轨迹更好地接触和吸引老年人。
