Association between community-based health services and health lifestyles of older adults: evidence from China

Abstract

Background: Healthy lifestyles play a significant role in promoting healthy aging. Nevertheless, existing studies have placed greater emphasis on individual factors while overlooking the effects of community-based health services on health lifestyles. The objective of this study was to classify the health lifestyles of older Chinese adults and assess the associations between community-based health services and the health lifestyles of older adults. Methods: Latent class analysis can classify homogeneous groups according to individuals’ different responses to manifest variables. Based on data from the 2018 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), latent class analysis was employed to identify the types of health lifestyles among community-dwelling older adults aged 60 years and above in China. Logistic regression was used to assess the associations between community-based health services and health lifestyles. And a total of 11,022 samples were entered into the analysis. Results: Three latent lifestyle classes were identified: “risky” (24.0%), “passive” (45.3%) and “preventive” (30.7%). Compared with a passive lifestyle, regular examinations were significantly associated with both risky (OR 1.384, 95% CI 1.191–1.609) and preventive (OR 1.733, 95% CI 1.527–1.965) lifestyles, and home visits (OR 1.467, 95% CI 1.133–1.899) and community nursing (OR 2.258, 95% CI 1.085–4.698) were significantly associated with a preventive lifestyle. Conclusion: This study confirmed the role of public health services in shaping the health lifestyles of older adults, so as to promote healthy aging. The study also has limitations in the comprehensive assessment of health lifestyles, causal inference, and the acquisition of recent data.