Does health status explain gender dissimilarity in healthcare use among older adults?

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which gender dissimilarity in healthcare use in later life is explained by variation in health and social-economic statuses. It is based on a nationwide sample in Brazil of 12,757 men and 16,186 women aged 60+ years. Individuals with great difficulties or unable to perform at least one daily living activity and/or to walk 100m were classified as "established disability". Those who had interrupted their activities in the previous 15 days because of a health problem were regarded as "temporarily disabled". The remaining we classified as "healthy". These categories were analyzed by multinomial logistic regression, taking "healthy" as the reference category. Prevalences of established disability were 6% among men and 11% among women. Temporary disabilities were 7.9% and 10.1%, respectively. Poor health status was associated with increased use of healthcare among men and women, but men and women differed significantly in relation to use pattern after adjustment for age, health status, and income. Older women were greater consumers of outpatient services and older men of inpatient care.

Amerindian Genetic Ancestry Protects against Alzheimer’s Disease

“…In our conditions, differences in gender distribution between affected and non-affected individuals probably derived from cultural aspects, since older women tend to be greater consumers of outpatient services, and older men of inpatient healthcare [32]. Despite these discrepancies render important confounding factor, age and gender were controlled in our analysis of covariance.…”

Physical activity and depressive symptoms in community-dwelling elders from southern Brazil

“…Similar results, however, have been reported in other populations with a higher frequency of females, which, in turn, may be explained by their higher life expectancy or predisposition to participate as volunteers in studies involving medical consultation and clinical and laboratory evaluations. 38 Another important point that needs mentioning concerns a bias, which may have affected our results, and is related to the social interaction that results from physical activity, which has already been shown to be associated to a lower prevalence of symptoms of depression. 39 It is thus possible that elders identified as more active and with fewer depressive symptoms are actually benefited by social interaction.…”

Predictors of Depression in Aging South Asian Canadians

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