Year:
Applicant:
Trainee:
Institution:
Email:
susan.kirkland@dal.ca
Keywords:
Project ID:
161011
Approved Project Status:
Project Summary
According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of Canadians aged 65 years and over will increase rapidly. It is well documented that the prevalence of chronic conditions increases with age. Researchers and policy makers are interested in better understanding how to measure individual and population health, especially in the context of aging. This will be important for evaluating the health care system and providing guidance to improve health programs among aging population. One of the most commonly used measures of health is Self-Rated Health (SRH). SRH is a global indicator of health which reflects a person’s integrated perception of their own health. Due to its simplicity and wide spread use, it is important to understand its strengths and limitations as a measurement of health in the context of aging. Therefore, we will examine the associations and inter-relationships between SRH and other self-reported and physically examined indicators of health in older adults.
Project Findings
Self-rated health (SRH) is a global indicator of health which reflects a person’s integrated perception of their own health. To obtain an in depth understanding of SRH, this study examined the association between SRH and key indicators of health in particular measures of physical health, psycho-social, health behaviours and clinical health measure.
This population-based sample was comprised of 51,338 men and women aged 45-85 years from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) and included both tracking and comprehensive cohorts. Ordinal logistic regression models assessed odds ratios and confidence intervals and estimated the association between SRH and key objective and subjective indicators of health.
Fully adjusted model revealed that SRH has statistically significant association with numerous health measures in particular measures of physical, cognition, depression and clinical health measures. SRH has the ability not only to reflect physical, psycho-social and health behaviours but also it accounts for clinical health measures.
