Self-rated health mediates the association between functional status and health-related quality of life in Parkinson's disease

Enhancing understanding of healthy aging based on time-varying dependencies among multidimensional health, life satisfaction, and health behaviors of older adults aged 60 years and over

BACKGROUND

Healthy aging is a process of not only achieving good health but also increasing the life satisfaction of older adults aged 60 years and over, in which health behaviors play an important role. There is a lack of research on the time-varying dependencies between health, life satisfaction, and health behaviors, impeding a deeper understanding of healthy aging.

PURPOSE

To develop an integrated framework for modeling the interrelationships among the components of healthy aging between multiple time slices.

METHODS

Based on the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Living Survey (CLHLS) data in the three waves of 2011/2012, 2014, and 2017/2018, Bayesian network and dynamic Bayesian network are jointly employed to study the relationships among the components of healthy aging within one time slice, as well as to explore the time-varying dependencies among the components between time slices.

RESULTS

The results of structure learning reveal the direction of effects between different dimensions of health, with mental health and social health affecting physical health and self-rated health affecting both physical and mental health. In addition, health behaviors are found to affect mental health and social health, while self-rated health can influence life satisfaction. The parameters learned from the data show the magnitude and direction of concurrent effects, one-period lagged effects and two-period lagged effects between the factors, which find that the time-varying dependencies vary but are generally positive, long-term, and accumulative over time. In addition, the results of autoregressive effects show the positive predictive effects of health and life satisfaction.

CONCLUSIONS

It confirms the influence pathway from health behaviors to multidimensional health to life satisfaction, and the time-varying dependencies among the components of healthy aging, which facilitates a deeper understanding of healthy aging. Combining the results of autoregressive effects and descriptive statistics, it further indicates that healthy aging is a comprehensive result arising from interactions of multiple factors. Policymakers should guide older adults aged 60 years and over to adopt healthier behaviors and ensure the long-term sustainability and continuity of policies.

Health status and public health education for internal older migrants in China: Evidence from a nationally representative survey

Background

Self-rated health has been widely used as a useful screening tool to subjectively evaluate individuals' health status. Under the context of the rapid growth of aging, there was a dramatic rapid expansion in internal older migrants in China. Serious concerns on the issues of health status continue to attract quite a lot of attention over the past decades. Public health education is one of the most important health care services and methods to improve individuals' health status. However, most previous studies focus on the utilization of public health services such as visiting to doctors, physical examination, and hospitalization. There was limited evidence on the self-rated health and public health education of older migrants.

Objectives

The study aimed to evaluate self-rated health and the associated determinants in older migrants, as well as to gain a deeper insight into the current status of public health education received by older migrants.

Methods

We derived the data from the National Migrants Population Health and Family Planning Dynamic Monitor Survey 2018, a cross-sectional study, for secondary analysis. Internal migrants aged 60 years old or over were included in the study. Self-rated health was the dependent variable, while sociodemographic characteristics were the independent variable. The univariate and multivariate analyses were performed by Stata 15.1.

Results

A total of 5,589 older migrants were included in the study. Eighty-two percentage of older migrants reported healthy self-rated health. There was a significant association between age, gender, minzu, education level, monthly income, public health education, and self-rated health (P < 0.5). However, the proportion of older migrants that received specific public health education was <50%. The most common approach to receiving public health education was through the leaflet, while <20% of older migrants received public health education through public consultation and one-to-one education.

Conclusions

It was necessary to promote the publicity of public health education in older migrants through easy access and diverse approaches in order to effectively spread health-related knowledge to older migrants to satisfy their health needs and maintain their health.

The self-rated health status and key influencing factors in middle-aged and elderly: Evidence from the CHARLS

To evaluate the self-rate health (SRH) status and explore influence factors of middle-aged and elderly in China.China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey was conducted in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2018. Data of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey in 2018 was used in our study and a total of 17898 participants were included. SRH status was graded as "very good, good, average, bad, very bad." Participants who answered "very good" and "good" were regarded as self-rated good health and who answered "average," "bad" and "very bad" were regarded as self-rated poor health. Odds ratio and 95% confidence interval of Logistics regression were calculated to evaluate the correlation between SRH and chronic diseases, demographic characteristics and lifestyle of middle-aged and elderly participants.A total of 4476 (25.01%) participants reported they had good health, and 13422 (74.99%) reported they had poor health. 9975 participants self-rated they had no chronic disease (55.73%), and 7923 (44.27%) participants self-rated they suffered from one and above chronic diseases. The prevalence of chronic diseases showed significant odds ratio and trend with SRH poor rate of participants. The more kinds of chronic diseases they suffered from, the poorer SRH was reported in middle-aged and elderly participants. Except for the chronic diseases, participants with higher age, living in rural, with high Center for Epidemiological Survey-Depression Scale score of depression and fewer time of physical activities also correlated with higher SRH (poor) rate.The SRH (good) rate was very low in middle-aged and elderly, participants who accompanied with more kinds of chronic diseases, fewer physical activities, higher age and living in the rural had a worse health status. A more comprehensive and integrated health framework should be strengthened to improve the health of middle-aged and elderly in China.

Study on the quality of life and the factors influencing it in elderly patients

A society of advanced age is arriving with the increasing number of elderly patients. Little attention has been paid to the quality of life of elderly patients, which is decreasing gradually. This article aims to study the quality of life among elderly patients and explore the factors influencing it, in addition to exploring effective ways to improve the quality of life of elderly patients.