Association between Age-Friendliness of Communities and Frailty among Older Adults: A Multilevel Analysis

Jixiang Xu, Yingwei Chen, Yujie Wang, Junling Gao and Limei Huang
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Jixiang Xu: School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
Yingwei Chen: School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
Yujie Wang: School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
Junling Gao: School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
Limei Huang: Songjiang Center of Disease Prevention and Control, Shanghai 201620, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 12, 1-11

Abstract: An age-friendly environment is one of the measures of healthy aging. However, there is scarce evidence of the relationship between the age-friendliness of communities (AFC) and frailty status among Chinese older adults. This study aims to examine this relationship using a multilevel analysis with the data of a cross-sectional study conducted among 10,958 older adults living in 43 communities in four cities in China. The validated Age-friendly Community Evaluation Scale and Chinese frailty screening-10 Scale (CFS-10) were used to measure AFC and Frailty. Multilevel regression analyses were performed to examine the relationship between the AFC in two assessments of individual- and community-level and frailty status. After controlling for individual-level socio-demographic, health status, and lifestyle variables, compared with older adults in the lowest quartile of the individual-level perception of AFC, the frailty odds ratios for those in the top three quartiles were 0.69 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.56–0.83), 0.75 (95% CI: 0.61–0.91), and 0.56 (95% CI: 0.48–0.74). However, there was no association between the community-level AFC and frailty. A higher level of age-friendliness in the community is associated with lower frailty odds. Therefore, building age-friendly communities may be an important measure to prevent frailty among Chinese older adults.

Keywords: age-friendly community; frailty; older adults; multilevel analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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