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Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults
Homebound vulnerable adults 65+ are at an increased risk for social isolation and loneliness. The adverse consequences of loneliness are profound – including increased health care utilization, burden of dementia, chronic diseases, and mortality. Meals on Wheels (MOW) is a familiar source of nutritio...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8682194/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3440 |
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author | Walsh, Sarah Chubinski, Jennifer Weaver, France |
author_facet | Walsh, Sarah Chubinski, Jennifer Weaver, France |
author_sort | Walsh, Sarah |
collection | PubMed |
description | Homebound vulnerable adults 65+ are at an increased risk for social isolation and loneliness. The adverse consequences of loneliness are profound – including increased health care utilization, burden of dementia, chronic diseases, and mortality. Meals on Wheels (MOW) is a familiar source of nutritional support for homebound individuals who wish to stay in their homes and has additional important benefits. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that MOW provides mental and social health benefits beyond nutrition, but less is known about the interplay between MOW, social cohesion, and health services use. This project will address this gap in the literature using data from the 2013-2020 National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally-representative panel study of 65+ Medicare enrollees. Using matching and longitudinal multivariate techniques, the risks of hospitalization and permanent nursing home entry are compared between MOW users and non-users. Our longitudinal dataset includes 11,266 observations. Of those, 12.8% rely on MOW or other food assistance (N= 1,488) and 16.6% experience low social cohesion (N= 1,936). Some 6.6% of participants are nursing home residents (N= 748) and the 39.1% report an overnight hospital stay in the prior year (N= 4,560). MOW is a comparatively low-cost intervention to help homebound older adults retain their independence and limit costlier healthcare utilization. This work extends our understanding of MOW services beyond simple nutrition benefits to its potential impact on social health. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8682194 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86821942021-12-20 Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults Walsh, Sarah Chubinski, Jennifer Weaver, France Innov Aging Abstracts Homebound vulnerable adults 65+ are at an increased risk for social isolation and loneliness. The adverse consequences of loneliness are profound – including increased health care utilization, burden of dementia, chronic diseases, and mortality. Meals on Wheels (MOW) is a familiar source of nutritional support for homebound individuals who wish to stay in their homes and has additional important benefits. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that MOW provides mental and social health benefits beyond nutrition, but less is known about the interplay between MOW, social cohesion, and health services use. This project will address this gap in the literature using data from the 2013-2020 National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally-representative panel study of 65+ Medicare enrollees. Using matching and longitudinal multivariate techniques, the risks of hospitalization and permanent nursing home entry are compared between MOW users and non-users. Our longitudinal dataset includes 11,266 observations. Of those, 12.8% rely on MOW or other food assistance (N= 1,488) and 16.6% experience low social cohesion (N= 1,936). Some 6.6% of participants are nursing home residents (N= 748) and the 39.1% report an overnight hospital stay in the prior year (N= 4,560). MOW is a comparatively low-cost intervention to help homebound older adults retain their independence and limit costlier healthcare utilization. This work extends our understanding of MOW services beyond simple nutrition benefits to its potential impact on social health. Oxford University Press 2021-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8682194/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3440 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Abstracts Walsh, Sarah Chubinski, Jennifer Weaver, France Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults |
title | Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults |
title_full | Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults |
title_fullStr | Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults |
title_full_unstemmed | Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults |
title_short | Social Connectedness, Meals on Wheels Services and Healthcare Utilization Among High-Need Older Adults |
title_sort | social connectedness, meals on wheels services and healthcare utilization among high-need older adults |
topic | Abstracts |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8682194/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3440 |
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