Historical and current predictors of self-reported health status among elderly persons in Barbados

Abstract

Objective. To understand the relative contribution of past events and of current experiences as determinants of health status among the elderly in the Caribbean nation of Barbados, in order to help develop timely public health interventions for that population. Methods. The information for this prevalence study was collected in Barbados between December 1999 Health status, aged, socioeconomic factors, Barbados. ABSTRACTThe average age of the population in countries around the world continues to rise, reflecting the concurrent declines in fertility and adult mortality (1). Population aging represents a public health success story, but it simulta-

Modelling social determinants of self-evaluated health of poor older people in a middle-income developing nation

“…This reinforces the position postulated by the WHO that healthy life expectancy [19] is where we ought to be going, as the new thrust is not living longer but how many of those years are lived without dysfunctions. Within the context of healthy life expectancy, studies that will be used to guide policy are those that incorporate many determinants, and not only biological conditions [20][21][22][23][24][25]. But none of those studies examined poor old people.…”

“…But none of those studies examined poor old people. Hambleton [20] and Bourne [23][24][25] are Caribbean scholars who have researched social determinants using the population of the poor, and this gap to date in the literature needs to be addressed, as the elderly constitute a vulnerable group, and the poor elderly group is even more vulnerable. Any policy which seeks to reduce poverty must take into account the poor elderly.…”

“…Like the WHO [35,36], the researcher believes that although ageing is a biological phenomenon, it cannot be due only to biological conditions, as ageing relates to bio-psycho-social [20,25,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] and environmental conditions [23][24][25][26], since people -biological organismsmust operate in a socio-physical milieu throughout their life span, and this demands an expansion of biological conditions in the ageing discourse. The very nature of gerontology must coalesce biopsychosocial and environmental conditions in assessing ageing and the health of the aged, which are in keeping with the WHO's Constitution of 1948, and this has also been established in many Caribbean scholarships [20,[23][24][25][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49].…”

“…The very nature of gerontology must coalesce biopsychosocial and environmental conditions in assessing ageing and the health of the aged, which are in keeping with the WHO's Constitution of 1948, and this has also been established in many Caribbean scholarships [20,[23][24][25][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. Within the context of the above-mentioned challenges for elderly people, when this is coupled with poverty which affects 10.2% of elderly Jamaicans (N = 29,794) in 2007, it intensifies the challenges experienced by elderly people.…”

“…Even among the WHO commissioned studies [51][52][53], as well as other studies on the social determinants of health [2,3,[20][21][22][23][24][25], the population of the poor elderly were not examined. Likewise in the Caribbean, scholars have examined the social determinants of the population or the elderly population, with poverty being an independent variable [20,[23][24][25].…”