Social psychological theories of illness and health decision making place the individual with the symptoms at the centre. In the case of dementia it is often a relative who is first to contact health care professionals. The article illustrates how the autonomy of both the individual with symptoms and their ...

Over the last two decades, the European Union (EU) has steadily increased its involvement in the health policies of its member states, with considerable support from the European Court of Justice (ECJ). However, much of the literature examining the Court's role has focused upon the intersection between internal market law ...

The rates of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and Partial Foetal Alcohol Spectrum (PFAS) in South Africa are the highest reported worldwide. There is a paucity of research examining the health care costs of caring for children with FAS or PFAS in this country. A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted using ...

Self-management of chronic illness is a high priority health care need of community dwelling elderly. Effective patient provider health communication related to health promotion, disease prevention, and disease management is a key intervention necessary to achieve optimal health outcomes. Little is known about the methods elderly patients actually use to ...

Acknowledging that changes in sociocultural environment influence health status, the purpose of this study was to compare perceived health, life satisfaction, and cardiovascular health in elderly Korean immigrants and elderly Koreans. In this cross-sectional study, a convenience sample of 88 elderly Korean immigrants and 295 elderly Koreans 65 and older ...

Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important but often neglected outcome measure in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) management. The prevalence of elderly presenting with ACS and undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is rising. We aimed to explore the impact of PCI on health status in elderly ACS patients. We ...

The present descriptive study seeks to explore the differences in terms of psychosocial work characteristics and health & well-being indicators among Danes, Western and Non-western immigrants working in the elderly care sector; and to identify differences in the association patterns between these psychosocial work characteristics and health & well-being across ...

The health system of a country needs to be adjusted to patterns of morbidity and mortality to mitigate the income-erosion consequences of prolonged ill-health and premature death of adults. Population-based data on mortality by cause are a key to modifying the health system. However, these data are scarce, particularly for ...

The study aimed to identify the felt common health problems, utilisation of health services and unmet needs of urban and rural elderly people of Bhaktapur district, Nepal. It was a cross sectional population study of people aged 60 years or more where 204 respondents were interviewed in 2009. The common ...

To analyse the association between healthcare utilisation of elderly persons (65 and over) in Belgium in terms of contacts with GP or specialist and the socio-economic indicators household income, highest educational level within the household, and housing tenure. A cross-sectional study based on 4494 non-institutionalised elderly participants in the Belgian ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine disparities in having a usual source of care and forgoing physician visits because of cost between elderly people (age > or =65y) with and without disabilities after consecutively controlling for predisposing, enabling, and perceived and evaluated health need factors using the Andersen behavioral model, and to identify ...

Gerontology-public health indicators of functional ability of the elderly in institutional and non-institutional health care in Croatia were determined by use of expert methodology developed at Department of Gerontology, Dr. Andrija Stampar Institute of Public Health in Zagreb, with the aim to upgrade the Program of Health Care Measures and ...

The world's population is aging, with the number of older adults projected to increase dramatically over the next 2 decades. This trend poses major challenges to health care systems, reflecting the greater health care use and more comorbid conditions among elderly adults. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a substantial concern ...

The purpose of this article is to explore the barriers that the uninsured elderly population encounter when accessing health care in the United States. These barriers include, but are not limited to lack of transportation, insurance, or family support; the daunting complexity of the health care system; poverty; culture; poor ...

Both stroke and osteoporosis are prevalent conditions among the elderly. With increasing life expectancy across the world, despite better preventative measures, the incidence of both conditions is set to rise in the ageing populations. Alongside with sharing several common risk factors, the current evidence suggests that these conditions are risk ...

AIM: To study the levels of happiness perception in the elderly in different regions, and determine the reasons affecting it. METHODS: The Thai Happiness Indicators: THI-15; 2001 were used in this study of 306 participants (> or =60 years) in different regions: rural, suburban, and urban. The elderly were chosen ...

Work has just been completed on a multi-million pound development at a Derbyshire hospital to provide a state-of-the-art facility for elderly mental health patients. The design for Derbyshire County Primary Care Trust's new mental health unit at Walton Hospital, Chesterfield, has been delivered by leading architects, Race Cottam Associates, as ...

In Japan, care for the elderly has been a serious social issue. The relationship between dog ownership and health of the elderly has attracted considerable attention, but it is still unclear whether dog ownership affects the health of owners. In this study, we focused on the experiences of dog ownership ...

To analyze the influence of demographic, socioeconomic, health, and contextual factors of the Brazilian federation units on the functional disability of the elderly. Cross-sectional study based on data from the 2003 PNAD (Brazilian National Household Survey), of IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) and Ipea (Institute of Applied Economic ...

Although clinicians and researchers understand the need to promote cardiovascular health in people of all ages, with population aging there are particular insights/issues that should be considered when counseling and caring for elderly patients. The focus here is to present current statistics relative to aging in the United States, discuss ...

Although elderly populations are more exposed to the risk of getting dengue, the clinical peculiarities of this disease in this age range are not well known. This report is about an 80-year-old woman with dengue complications, self-medicated with salicylate. Literature indicates a more severe clinical condition, high hospitalization rate and ...

This study aimed to investigate the relationship among falls, fear of falling (FOF), and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in elderly people living in the community. The study was a community-based surveillance with residents aged 65 or over in Taipei, Taiwan. Data were collected in face-to-face interviews. Of the 4,056 ...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES: Research has shown that health related conditions and socio-economic factors influence disability in the elderly. We examined the prevalence of health related disability in community dwelling elderly (> or =65 yr) residents in a suburb of Bangaluru, Karnataka, India, and assessed the association of disability with various ...

The present special issue of Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports deals with health and fitness benefits of regular participation in small-sided football games. One review article and 13 original articles were the result of a 2-year multi-center study in Copenhagen and Zurich and include studies of different ...

This study aims to determine the factors that may be related to falls in the elderly assisted by the Family Health Program (FHP). Elderly individuals aged 60 years or over, who were assisted by the FHP primary care system (n=2209), responded to a sociodemographic and health questionnaire. Mental health was ...

Information on dependency level of elderly in rapidly aging developing countries is limited, but this is needed to ascertain the extent of need for help with activities of daily living (ADLs). In-person information was obtained in 1995 from a statewide survey of representative community residents >/=60 years of age in ...

This study evaluated the factors associated with use of health examinations by the elderly. Data were obtained from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) in Taiwan for 2,482 individuals aged 65 years or older. The Andersen model was used as the analytic framework, and all variables were categorized into ...

Personal Health Record (PHR) has been increasingly recognized and actively promoted by the federal government, experts and industry as an important tool for improving healthcare in the U.S. However, the PHR use by patients and its utility have not been studied well. We have evaluated a web-based PHR in multiple ...

Although anemia is common among the elderly, available data for anemia among them are limited in Japan. The aim of the present study was to compare the prevalence of anemia among elderly groups, and evaluate factors attributable to anemia. We enrolled 284 elderly residents in 2 long-term health care facilities, ...

Community physicians should be knowledgeable of basic geriatrics to cope with the challenges posed by the growing number of older patients and their complex needs. A survey of knowledge in basic health care for elderly persons, carried out by our team in 1996, revealed that it was insufficient. The authors ...

A system for diagnosing health problems from gait patterns of elderly to support their independent living is proposed in this paper. Motion capture system, which consists of tags attached to the body and sensors situated in the apartment, is used to capture gait of elderly. Position of the tags is ...

Falling is one of the most common health hazards for the elderly. Tinetti et al. (1990) proposed the concept of falls self-efficacy, which explored fear of falling from the perspective of self-efficacy. Falls self-efficacy and its associated factors have not been extensively studied in Japan. This study examined the impact ...

In coming decades the proportion of very elderly people living in the Western world will dramatically increase. This forthcoming "grey epidemic" will lead to an explosion of chronic diseases. In order to anticipate booming health care expenditures and to assure that social security is funded in the future, research focusing ...

This paper identifies the main gender differences in health and socio-economic characteristics of the elderly in four Latin American cities. Using locally weighted regressions as well as a flexible model specification that treats age non-parametrically, we investigate whether these unadjusted gender gaps in health are due to gender differences in ...

We examined the effects of community socioeconomic conditions, air pollution, and the physical environment on elderly health and survival in China. We analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of 15 973 elderly residents of 866 counties and cities with multilevel logistic regression models in which individuals were nested within ...

OBJECTIVE: the goal of this study was to determine the relationship between health status, including self-rated health status and chronic disease, and risk for depression among the elderly. Method: MEDLINE, EMBASE and The Cochrane Library Database were used to identify potential studies. The studies were classified into cross-sectional and longitudinal ...

The elderly represent the largest-growing segment of the population. Specialized training in geriatrics is essential for healthcare professionals to provide optimal health care. As part of an ongoing education program on geriatrics, the game Into Aging: Understanding Issues Affecting the Later Stages of Life, 2nd ed. (1991) was provided to ...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this research was to segment older people in subgroups with similar social engagement activity patterns in order to better target public health interventions. DESIGN: Cross-sectional data, collected in 2005 by Dutch community health services (response 79%), from 22026 independently living elderly aged 65 or older were ...

This study examined some health and psychosocial problems associated with mourning among 72 elderly Ijaw widows. The respondents complained of fever, gastrointestinal disorders and a range of psychosocial problems such as disinheritance, suspicion, frustration, hopelessness and degrading inhuman treatment. Community women/in-laws increased the extent to which elderly widows accepted traditional ...

The present investigation aimed to assess the health-related QoL (HRQoL) of elderly people living in two settings: (i) rural community and (ii) homes for the elderly in a district of South India. The data are drawn from elderly (>60 years of age) sampled from both settings. The short form 36-item ...

Medicaid is an important source of supplemental health care coverage for low-income seniors, yet little is known about the effect of state policy on Medicaid enrollment by eligible elderly. Data from a nationally representative survey were used to examine Medicaid enrollment by elderly, low-income Medicare beneficiaries living in states that ...

Falls are a common public health problem amongst the elderly in many communities. There is a need for information on the causes as well as the impact of this preventable risk on health among the elderly in sub-Saharan Africa. To examine the prevalence and factors associated with falls among a ...

A drastically increasing elderly population and disparity among disability poses a concern for the U.S. health care industry. This retrospective cross-sectional study analyzed whether ADL and IADL disabilities were different among non-Hispanic white (NHW) and non-Hispanic black (NHB) populations age 65 and over. Data was retrieved from the 2001-2003 National ...

This article forms part of a series looking at the relationship between diet and good health, and the role of the dietician in the primary health care team. This review highlights some of the physical, social and medical factors that can indicate compromised nutritional status in the elderly, the screening ...

The Butler Project is a technological e-health platform that uses the Internet to connect various users; it was designed to deliver health care to the elderly. The Butler platform has three levels of implementation: diagnosis (mood monitoring, alert system, management reports), therapy (training in inducing positive moods, memory work), and ...

OBJECTIVES: Many elderly persons have drug benefits with coverage gaps, such as in Medicare Part D. Because beneficiaries who have such gaps must pay all drug costs, an accurate knowledge of gap thresholds and communication with providers about exceeding caps is important for elderly persons to manage out-of-pocket drug costs. ...

Concerns originally raised by Welsh Health Estates personnel over the risk of patients, and particularly the elderly and children, burning themselves on the body of mixer taps incorporating TMV3 thermostatic mixing valves (TMVs), have, suppliers claim, seen a concerted recent drive to improve such devices' design. Manufacturers have also striven ...

When both physicians and pharmacists in Taiwan prescribed and dispensed drugs, many elderly people considered the two types of health care providers more or less synonymous (i.e., close substitutes). Two policies mandated in the 1990 s changed this perception: National Health Insurance (NHI), which provides insurance coverage to all citizens, ...

Change in socio-economic status and various health problems adversely affect an individual's way of life during old age. To study the health and social problems of the elderly and their attitude towards life. Descriptive study carried out in the Field practice area of the Department of Community Medicine in South ...

INTRODUCTION: Accidents in the home are a major public health issue in most industrialised countries, as they are a frequent cause of injury and death. Moreover, since a considerable portion of such accidents involve elderly people, it is important to assess their social impact in this population. In Italy, the ...