TITLE:
Associations of social participation, demographic, socioeconomic and disease factors with nutritional risk in a group of older Hong Kong adults
AUTHORS:
Louisa Ming Yan Chung, Joanne Wai Yee Chung
KEYWORDS:
Malnutrition; Social Participation; Mini Nutritional Assessment; Old Aged Care; Malnutrition Risk; Community Care
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.5 No.3,
March
7,
2013
ABSTRACT:
Aims: To identify the
impact of social participation, socio-demographic, socio-economic and disease
factors on nutritional risk among older persons in Hong Kong. Background: Few
published work has investigated the relative risks of social participation,
demographic, socioeconomic and disease factors with malnutrition in
community-living older people, this study is to investigate the associations of
these risk factors on the nutritional status in better nutrition support for
the old age group. Design: A crosssectional study. Methods: It was a secondary
analysis of a database in a mobile community centre between January 2008 and
December 2009. One thousand seven hundred and thirty one participants aged
between 54 and 103 were collected. With 319 full Mini Nutritional Assessment
(MNA) completed, the participants’ demographic, socio-economic data, diseases,
and nutritional status were analyzed with relative risk and 95% confidence
interval level to identify the factors that make them vulnerable to nutritional
risk. Results: The prevalence of malnutrition in the community-dwelling old was
3.95% and 83.7% of the sample was at risk of malnutrition. Living on
allowances, young old who was socially engaged and good relationship with
family members were at less risk to malnutrition. Conclusions: Special attention should be taken to these groups as they are
prone to develop malnutrition.