School of Public Health, Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Occupational Hazard Identification and Control, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
Jintang First People's Hospital, West China Hospital Sichuan University, Jingtang, China.
Front Public Health. 2022 Jul 7;10:824514. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.824514. eCollection 2022.
Aim to evaluate the effect of social participation on utilization of medical services among middle-aged and elderly residents in China.
We used data from the 2018 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Social participation is classified into three types. Furthermore, to control for confounding factors, our study computed propensity score matching (PSM) to evaluate the effect of social participation on the utilization of medical services.
The result of PSM indicates that social participation significantly positively affects the utilization of outpatient services, the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT = 0.038) and the utilization of inpatient services (ATT = 0.015) by middle-aged and elderly residents. Furthermore, the utilization of outpatient health care services was significantly positively associated with leisure activities (ATT = 0.035), social activities to help others (ATT = 0.031), and learning activities to gain new knowledge (ATT = 0.034) among middle-aged and elderly residents. The utilization of inpatient health care was significantly positively associated with leisure activities (ATT = 0.015) but had no significant association with social deeds that help others and increased new knowledge among middle-aged and elderly residents.
Thus, social participation significantly positively affects healthcare utilization by middle-aged and elderly residents. Hence, the government and society should provide more conveniences and promote social participation among middle-aged and elderly residents.
评估社会参与对中国中老年居民医疗服务利用的影响。
我们使用了 2018 年中国健康与养老追踪调查的数据。社会参与分为三种类型。此外，为了控制混杂因素，我们通过倾向评分匹配（PSM）来评估社会参与对医疗服务利用的影响。
PSM 的结果表明，社会参与显著正向影响中老年居民的门诊服务利用、平均处理效应（ATT=0.038）和住院服务利用（ATT=0.015）。此外，中老年居民的门诊卫生保健服务利用与休闲活动（ATT=0.035）、帮助他人的社会活动（ATT=0.031）和获取新知识的学习活动（ATT=0.034）显著正相关。住院医疗服务利用与休闲活动（ATT=0.015）显著正相关，但与帮助他人的社会行为和中老年居民获取新知识没有显著关联。
因此，社会参与显著正向影响中老年居民的医疗保健利用。因此，政府和社会应为中老年居民提供更多便利并促进其社会参与。
