Impact of community comprehensive intervention on healthy behavior and self-rated health status among family caregivers of disabled elderly

Abstract

Objective To investigate the effect of community comprehensive intervention on health behavior and self-rated health status among family caregivers of disabled elderly. Methods One hundred and twenty family caregivers of disabled elderly were selected from community health service centers of Beijing Dongcheng District, and were given 6 month-comprehensive community intervention (intervention group); 121 family caregivers of disabled elderly from another community were selected as the control group. The knowledge and skills of caregiving, health behaviors (daily exercise time, daily relaxation time) and self-rated health status were evaluated before and 6 months after intervention. Results The knowledge and skill scores in intervention group were improved by 50.781 points, the daily exercise time and daily relaxation time were prolonged by 0.491 h and 0.837 h, respectively after the intervention (all P 0.05). Conclusion Community comprehensive intervention improves the knowledge and skills of caregiving, and the health behaviors among family caregivers of disabled elderly, but the intervention measures does not impact the self-rated health status of family caregivers. Key words: Disability; Aged; Community health services; Family caregivers