Health Changes among Older Individuals in Europe before and during COVID-19 Pandemic

Description

Early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic can be associated with changes in mental and physical health, but as the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the capacity of healthcare systems in long-term it can potentially compromise other health outcomes as well. The objective of the study was to evaluate changes in health before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.. The study was based on a sample of individuals from wave 7, wave 8, including Covid-19 add-on and wave 9 Covid-19-add-on of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) in the period from 2017 till 2021. The sample size was 38680 respondents from 24 European countries. Descriptive statistics and univariate binary logistic regression was performed.. The proportion of respondents with poor or fair health status in 2021, compared to 2017, has increased from 0.2% to 10.5% with highest increase in Czech Republic (10.5%) and Bulgaria (8.1%). The main predictors for fair or poor self-rated health (unadjusted OR; 95%CI) were age 75+ years (reference group 50-74 years) for Greece (5.73; 4.74-6.91), Latvia (5.08; 3.35-7.70), Slovakia (4.44; 2.92-6.75) and Lithuania (3.77; 2.85-5.00), nervousness for Romania (5.71; 4.44-7.35), Croatia (5.14; 4.14-6.37) and Hungary (4.18; 3.02-5.81), sadness or depression for Romania (6.01; 4.66-7.76), Croatia (5.40; 4.34-6.72) and Lithuania (4.54; 3.42-6.02), trouble sleeping for Romania (5.94; 4.64-7.62) and Slovakia (5.83; 8.30-5.84), loneliness for Latvia (9.13; 3.89-21.46), Cyprus (9.04; 4.32-18.90) and Bulgaria (8.99; 5.21-15.53), limitations or severe limitations due to health for Italy (16.85; 13.97-20.32), Romania (13.07; 9.94-17.18) and Denmark (12.75; 9.47-17.15). . The most important predictive factors for health change are related to age, physical and mental health factors for all countries. Factors associated with Covid-19 pandemic didn’t show significant impact on health status, however health deterioration due to mental health factors could be intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Period	29 Mar 2023
Event title	RSU Research week 2023: Society. Health. Welfare
Event type	Conference
Conference number	9
Organiser	Rīga Stradiņš University
Location	Riga, LatviaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International