Spatial Factors Associated with Fall among the Elderly in Thailand

Abstract

Fall is the leading cause of injury-related visits to emergency departments around the world, including in Thailand, and the primary etiology of accidental deaths in elderly people. Fall among the elderly is an increasing problem, causing a high degree of morbidity, mortality, and use of healthcare services. This study statistically identified aimed to determine the association of spatial factors with falls among elderly people in Thailand. The participant consisted of 40,489 elderly people and was conducted using a data set from the national statistical office of Thailand in 2017 and other data. A Moran’s I and local indicators of spatial association (Lisa) were used to identify the spatial autocorrelation between poverty incidence, the proportion of patients with non-communicable diseases, and the population-to-village health volunteers’ ratio with falls among elderly people in Thailand. The results showed that there was spatial global autocorrelation between poverty incidence, the proportion of patients with non-communicable diseases, and the population-to-village health volunteers among elderly people in Thailand with Moran’s I values of 0.176, 0.049, and 0.034, respectively. Therefore, the focus should be on promoting and preventing non-communicable diseases, as well as promoting income-generating jobs for the elderly by closely supervising village health volunteers and elderly caregivers to reduce the risk of falls among the elderly and improve their quality of life.