The Impact of Health Promotion on Perceived Health Status and Health Services Utilization Among the Elderly in Taiwan

[[abstract]]The purpose of this research is to understand the current health promotion life styles of the elderly population. This research is based on Andersen?s Medical Service Utilization Behavior Model. This model reveals the relationship between the demographic variables, self- perceived health status and medical service utilizations, and to combine the related literature and the data of medical service utilization to propose suggestions for sanitary control within health organizations in order to establish the elderly population health promotion program in the future. Research methods? The research data is from the 2003 fifth research of the senior citizen health and living status long term care follow-up by Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health. The analyzed objects include the original samples from 1989 and the supplementary samples from 1996. However, as of 2003, only 3084 samples above 60 years old still survive. After the basic demographic variables had been controlled, the researcher utilized logistic regression to discover the influence of health promotion life style, self-perceived health status and medical service utilization. The research results are as below? 1.The results show that age and physical health conditions have negative correlations. The older the senior citizens are, the worse their health status. 11.4? senior citizens who are above 65 of age think they are in good health condition, while only 24? think their health conditions isn?t bad, and 31.4? think their health condition is average and 26.1? think they don?t have good health condition and 6.9? senior citizens think their health condition is not good at all. 2.The significant factors that seem to affect the elder population health promotion life style among demographic characteristics are age, educational background and health promotion life style. Health promotion life style and self-perceived health status have positive correlation toward medical service utilization. 3. The effective predictive factors that seem to affect medical service utilization are self-perceived health status and health promotion life style. Self-perceived current health status and health responsibility are the strongest predictive factors when making the most of senior citizens medical services. 4. The results of this study show that senior citizens who have lower self-perceived health status, unhealthy physical conditions and negative health promotion life style use modern medicine medical services more often. In contrast, if they have better health promotion life style, better self-perceived health status, they make less use of modern medicine medical services. 5. The nutritious status affects the utilization of medical service. Senior citizens who have worse self-perceived health sand nutrition status, make use of medical service more often, especially, in frequency of use of outpatient services, emergency treatments and hospitalizations. Thus, this research suggests conveying proper education to senior citizens concerning correct eating habit and nutritious behavior. 6. Health promotion lifestyle and self-perceived health status are useful in explaining medical promotion utilization models. This research suggests that utilizing long term follow-up studies will reveal how health promotion affects use of medical services, and adding health promotion variables to see how they influence the relationship between self-perceived health status and medical service utilization. A better understand of this phenomenon will make for better allocation of medical resources