Health outcomes associated with participating in community care centres for older people in Taiwan

Abstract

Community care centres (CCCs) are widespread across Taiwan and have provided health promotion and social activities for older people in communities since 1995. The purpose of this study was to describe the status of the delivery and management of CCCs for older people, and to explore the effects of individual factors and the organisational factors on the health-related outcome of older people's participation in CCCs. The sample was taken from participants at CCCs in Taichung, Taiwan. Twenty-five CCCs participated in the study. The managers and the elderly participants of CCCs underwent face-to-face interviews. In total, 417 elderly participants and 25 chiefs completed the face-to-face interviews. The participants reported that self-reported health, sleep quality, memory, family relationships, care for health, and health literacy improved after they participated in the programme. There were no consistent organisational factors related to the outcomes. However, management style was related to sleep quality improvement and staffing getting paid was related to family relationship improvement. Policy recommendations are provided.

Utilisation of community care services and self-rated health among elderly population in China: a survey-based analysis with propensity score matching method

“…For social and recreational services, results of two algorithms passed the significance test at the 5% level and suggested the positive and significant association between social and recreational services utilisation and elderly health, which is consistent with previous research [ 49 ]. A typical form of community social and recreational services in China is providing leisure activities appropriate to older adults in some elderly activity centers, which has been proved to be an effective intervention for the improvement of health and life satisfaction of the elderly [ 50 , 51 ].…”

Social Determinants and Disparities in Active Aging Among Older Taiwanese

“…Men were more likely to participate in social groups related to occupations and employment, whereas women were more likely to participate in cultural and learning activities. After the Community Care Center Plan was implemented in Taiwan in 2005, learning, social, and recreational activities have been widely provided among older adults [59]. The policy provides good opportunities for women who did not have a chance to become well educated to participate in lifelong learning and volunteering activities.…”

Efficacy of Government-Sponsored Community Health Programs for Older Adults: A Systematic Review of Published Evaluation Studies

“…In particular, 7 articles [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] addressed the PACE program, which is a longstanding federally sponsored health program in the US that encourages the establishment of coordinated care services for older adults. Several other programs were evaluated by two studies each, including the US Meals on Wheels program [24,25], the Community Care Centres Plan (CCCP) in Taiwan [26,27], the Cardiovascular Health Awareness Program (CHAP) in Ontario [28,29], the Agita Sao Paulo Program in Brazil [30,31], the Frailty Portal program in Nova Scotia [32,33], and the Healthy Aging program in the Netherlands [34,35]. In the last four of these cases, this represented an early descriptive evaluation of the program, followed by a second more formal evaluation.…”

“…A conceptually related type of program aimed to create senior activity centers providing a combination of recreational, social, and health care services for older adults. Programs of this type were evaluated by studies located in Taiwan [26,27] and Indonesia [37]. The distribution of countries represented here was derived from the literature search as described above, and represents the programs with qualifying published evaluations.…”