Relationship between the Well-Being of Elderly Men and Cohabiting with Women Who Have Had Experience as a Health Promotion Volunteer in Japan: A Cross-Sectional Study

Haruhiko Imamura, Hideki Nakamura and Yuji Nishiwaki
Additional contact information
Haruhiko Imamura: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Medicine, Toho University, Tokyo 1438540, Japan
Hideki Nakamura: Health and Welfare Department, Suzaka City Hall, Suzaka City, Nagano 3828511, Japan
Yuji Nishiwaki: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Medicine, Toho University, Tokyo 1438540, Japan

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: In Japan, there are traditionally many health promotion volunteer activities. However, the effects these activities have on the volunteers’ families are not clear. This study examined whether the well-being of Japanese elderly men was affected by cohabiting with women who have had experience as a health promotion volunteer. The study area was Suzaka City, where more than 7500 women have been elected and served as health promotion volunteers for over 60 years. A cross-sectional survey targeting all residents aged 65 years or over was conducted in 2014 using a self-administered questionnaire and 10,758 (77.7%) residents participated. Of those, married men who lived with married women were analyzed ( n = 2370). Functional capacity and depressive symptoms were analyzed as outcomes respectively. Of the 2370 men, 1434 (60.5%) lived with women who had experience as a health promotion volunteer in the past. Modified Poisson regression analysis adjusting for covariates showed that living with women who had this experience was inversely associated with depressive symptoms (adjusted Prevalence Ratio; 0.84, 95% Confidence Interval; 0.73–0.97), but not with low functional capacity. These results suggest that living with women who had the experience as health promotion volunteer might affect depressive symptoms of elderly men.

Keywords: health promotion volunteer; well-being; functional capacity; depressive symptoms; family (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/1/65/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/1/65/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2018:i:1:p:65-:d:193504

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().