Antabe Roger, Sano Yujiro, Kyeremeh Emmanuel, Amoak Daniel
Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto.
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Nipissing University, North Bay.
Can Geriatr J. 2024 Dec 1;27(4):438-445. doi: 10.5770/cgj.27.773. eCollection 2024 Dec.
Canada is undergoing a demographic shift, with projections indicating that over 25% of the country's population will be 65 years or older by 2063. While this has raised critical concerns about Canada's preparedness to meet the social and health-care needs of an aging population, the increasing incidence of food insecurity is particularly affecting vulnerable groups, such as older Canadians, with implications for their health-care service utilization. Despite this observation, there are nascent studies examining the role of household food insecurity status on unmet health-care needs among older people in Canada. The main objective of our study is to assess the association between household food insecurity and unmet health-care needs among older Canadians.
We used data from a selected sample of 21,178 participants as part of the 2017-18 Canadian Community Health Survey and applied logistic regression analysis.
Our findings indicate that older people experiencing any type of food insecurity, that is, either moderate (OR=3.07, <.01) or severe (OR=4.09, <.01) were more likely to have reported unmet health-care needs compared to their counterparts in food secure households, even after controlling for a range of demographic, socioeconomic, and health and health-care variables. Our finding is concerning, considering that older people in Canada who are in most need of health-care services due to their food insecurity status are instead reporting unmet health-care needs.
This revelation calls for urgent policy attention to reduce the episodes of household food insecurity among older people in Canada. Specifically, to improve their access to health-care services, providing them with periodic grocery rebates as part of the social protection package for seniors in Canada would help mitigate the problem of food insecurity among them.
加拿大正在经历人口结构转变，预测显示到2063年，该国超过25%的人口将年满65岁或以上。虽然这引发了人们对加拿大是否有能力满足老龄化人口的社会和医疗保健需求的严重担忧，但粮食不安全发生率的上升尤其影响到弱势群体，如加拿大老年人，这对他们的医疗服务利用产生了影响。尽管有这一观察结果，但仍有一些新出现的研究在探讨家庭粮食不安全状况对加拿大老年人未满足的医疗保健需求的作用。我们研究的主要目的是评估加拿大老年人家庭粮食不安全与未满足的医疗保健需求之间的关联。
我们使用了2017 - 18年加拿大社区健康调查中21178名参与者的选定样本数据，并应用了逻辑回归分析。
我们的研究结果表明，与粮食安全家庭中的老年人相比，经历任何类型粮食不安全的老年人，即中度（比值比[OR]=3.07，<.01）或重度（OR = 4.09，<.01）粮食不安全的老年人，即使在控制了一系列人口、社会经济、健康和医疗保健变量之后，更有可能报告未满足的医疗保健需求。考虑到加拿大那些因粮食不安全状况而最需要医疗保健服务的老年人反而报告了未满足的医疗保健需求，我们的这一发现令人担忧。
这一发现呼吁政策给予紧急关注，以减少加拿大老年人家庭粮食不安全的情况。具体而言，为改善他们获得医疗保健服务的机会，作为加拿大老年人社会保护计划的一部分，为他们提供定期的食品杂货回扣将有助于缓解他们的粮食不安全问题。
