Abstract
BackgroundAlthough social participation has been reported to be associated with significantly lower risks of mortality and disability, to our knowledge, no study has estimated its impact on disability-free life expectancy (DFLE). Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between social participation and DFLE in community-dwelling older people.MethodsWe analyzed 11-year follow-up data from a cohort study of 11,982 Japanese older adults (age ≥65 years) in 2006. We collected information on the number of social participations using a questionnaire. Using this information, we categorized the participants into four groups. DFLE was defined as the average number of years a person could expect to live without disability. The multistate life table method using a Markov model was employed for calculating DFLE.ResultsThe results revealed that DFLE according to the number of social participations was 17.8 years (95% confidence interval [CI], 17.3–18.2) for no activities, 20.9 (95% CI, 20.4–21.5) for one activity, 21.5 (95% CI, 20.9–22.0) for two activities, and 22.7 (95% CI, 22.1–23.2) for three activities in men, and 21.8 (95% CI, 21.5–22.2), 25.1 (95% CI, 24.6–25.6), 25.3 (95% CI, 24.7–25.9), and 26.7 years (95% CI, 26.1–27.4), respectively, in women. This difference in DFLE did not change after the participants were stratified for smoking, body mass index, physical activity, and depression.ConclusionSocial participation is associated with longer DFLE among Japanese older people; therefore, encouraging social participation at the population level could increase life-years lived in good health.
Highlights
With the aging of the population, increasing attention is being paid to quality of life (QOL) rather than mere longevity
Healthy life expectancy (HLE), which is defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live at a certain level of health, has recently been adopted to measure the state of health at the population level.[1]
The mean age was lower in the social participation group, and those with frequent social participation included higher proportions of males and current smokers and lower proportions of those with depression and those walking less than 0.5 hour per day
Summary
With the aging of the population, increasing attention is being paid to quality of life (QOL) rather than mere longevity. Healthy life expectancy (HLE), which is defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live at a certain level of health, has recently been adopted to measure the state of health at the population level.[1] Because HLE calculates both morbidity and mortality simultaneously, it can capture the both the quantity and quality of lived years.[2,3]. Social participation has been reported to be associated with significantly lower risks of mortality and disability, to our knowledge, no study has estimated its impact on disability-free life expectancy (DFLE). This study aimed to investigate the association between social participation and DFLE in community-dwelling older people
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