Characterizing the Health of Older Rural Australians Attending Rural Events: Implications for Future Health Promotion Opportunities

Abstract

This paper describes the health of older Australians (>65 years) attending rural events to inform health promotion interventions for rural populations. This cross-sectional study collected survey data and objective health measures between 2017 and 2020 at two events held in rural New South Wales, Australia. Participants included in the analysis were adults > 65 years of age. Data included demographic and health information, anthropometric measures (height, weight, waist circumference), and dietary and physical activity data. A total of 256 people > 65 years participated. Our sample, which was mostly male (59.0%), contained people aged between 66 and 75 years (72.3%). Participants lived in either a large rural (34.0%) or small rural town (22.3%), with low levels of education (60.9% did not complete high school). Dietary quality was rated as below average. All but 17.2% of the participants reported having a health condition. The risk of a health condition was associated with increasing age, lower education, and higher waist circumference, but not remoteness. Rural events may provide an opportunity to access, engage with, and understand the health of older rural Australians, especially males. They may offer ideal contexts for health and nutrition promotion opportunities in rural areas where access to health professionals is limited.

Rural nutrition and dietetics research—Future directions

“…22 The lack of involvement of place-based nutrition and dietetics experts in rural research, 6,11,12 along with significant gaps in our knowledge around rural-specific solutions, has been identified as a major factor that limits progress in addressing the rural health gaps attributable to poor dietary intake in Australia. 9,11,12,15 For example, substantial opportunities have been lost, where dietary intake data have been collected from rural populations but has not been presented separately from metropolitan data. This means that new knowledge is lost for these communities of high need and we do not have nutrition-related knowledge to inform concerted efforts to improve the health of these communities and reduce preventable disease.…”

“…11,12 Evidence from the reviews suggests that the expertise and capacity of rural dieticians and nutritionists needs to be fully harnessed to best address the nutritionrelated health issues in rural areas. 4,5,7,9,11,15 Building local research capacity is recognised as an important factor in improving rural health broadly, [23][24][25][26][27] and evidence illuminates the opportunity available to build on nutrition research capacity in rural Australia 28 Rural Health. An important next step is to build local nutrition and dietetics research capacity, which will lead to place-based solutions for addressing the diet-related health inequalities in rural Australia.…”

“…The term ‘rural’ refers to areas defined as Modified Monash Areas 3–5 8 . Over the past decade, there has been an advancement in knowledge around the role of nutrition in the health gaps observed between metropolitan and rural Australia 5,9 . For example, up to 38% of the gap in cardiovascular disease mortality between rural and metropolitan areas could be reduced if modifiable risk factors, such as fruit and vegetable intake, could be improved 4,5 …”

Dietary patterns in rural and metropolitan Australia: a cross-sectional study exploring dietary patterns, inflammation and association with cardiovascular disease risk factors

“…Despite the lack of research on rural dietary intakes in Australia, 11 there is evidence to show diet plays a role in health inequities between rural and metro areas 12 13 and that understanding dietsin rural populations are important to inform future evidence-based health promotion initiatives. 14 Analysis of the most recent national-level dietary intake and modifiable risk factor data showed that if people living in rural Australia were able to achieve the same behaviour and risk factor profiles as their metro counterparts, the absolute gap in mortality between the two geographies would be reduced by 38%. 12 Other modelling has shown that meeting fruit and vegetable recommendations would achieve the highest CVD mortality reductions (~40%) in CVD in rural areas out of all modifiable behaviours.…”