Associations of social participation, demographic, socioeconomic and disease factors with nutritional risk in a group of older Hong Kong adults

Louisa Ming Yan Chung, Joanne Wai Yee Chung

Department of Health and Physical Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, China.

DOI: 10.4236/health.2013.53051                

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.

Keywords

Malnutrition; Social Participation; Mini Nutritional Assessment; Old Aged Care; Malnutrition Risk; Community Care

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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