Health Behavior and Health Condition of the Rural Young-Old and the Rural Old-Old in an Agricultural District / 農村醫學 地域保健

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to garner useful information through a comparative analysis of health behaviors and health states between the young-old and old-old elderly in a rural Korean area. METHODS: We define the young-old elderly as those 65 to 74 years of age, and the old-old as those over 70. The survey was administered in October and November of 2009 at senior citizen centers in Sangju City, Kyongsangbuk-do, South Korea. The number of subjects surveyed approximated the demographics of the aged population of the administrative district of centers of 24 eup, myeon, and dong. RESULTS: Compared with the young-old elderly, the old-old were vulnerable to population sociological characteristics. While there were many cases of contraction of diseases, only a small percentage of old-old elderly were engaged in regular exercise. In addition, the old-old elderly lagged behind the young-old in terms of physical activity, mental and oral health, hearing, and vision. CONCLUSIONS: The vulnerability of the old-old elderly in terms of physical and mental health needs to be acknowledged as various characteristics of the elderly that appears according an age group. A variety of disease prevention and health promotion programs that focus on the health behavior and status of the young-old and old-old elderly need to be developed and put into practice.

Factors Related to Health Promoting Behaviors of Young-Old and Old-Old Elderly in Rural Areas / 農村醫學 地域保健

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of health promoting behaviors and the significant factors in rural elderly(young-old vs old-old). METHODS: The data was collected using structured questionnaires from June 22th to Sep. 18th, 2009. A total of 556 elderly aged 65 years or over were selected from 14 rural districts in C province, South Korea. Age was divided into two groups as below 65-74 and 75 or older. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain information on the demographic characteristics, their perceived health status, the difficulty of activities of daily living, quality of life, self-efficacy and health promoting behaviors. The health promoting behaviors included nutrition, stress management, interpersonal support, exercise, health responsibility and self-actualization. The scores for health promoting behaviors were used mean and standard deviation. The data was analyzed using SPSS Win 12.0. RESULTS: Of the 556 subjects, we found that the young-old(65-74 aged) were 359 and the old-old elderly(over 75 aged) were 197. We found that the level of health promoting behavior was higher for young-old (2.75+/-0.374) compared to old-old elderly people (2.67+/-0.399). In multiple linear regression, quality of life, self-efficacy, living with spouse, and number of generation living together for the young-old, and quality of life for old-old elderly were significantly associated with health promoting behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: The study findings indicate that there are age differences in associated factor of health promoting behaviors. Therefore our findings may provide useful assistance in developing effective intervention programs to improve health promoting behavior of the elderly in rural areas according to their age differences.