Objective To study the status and risk factors for falling down in elderly people in rural areas, and to provide evidences for preventions. Methods A total of 1 003 farmers aged 60 years old and over were surveyed to study the falls occurred during the previous 12 months before March 2001 in the elderly in a town of Laizhou City by cluster sampling method. Results The average incidence of falling down was 22.6%, 15.9% for men and 28.4% for women, respectively. The risk factors of falls included gender, age, single-living, falling history in the previous year, at least combined two kinds of chronic diseases, manifesting at least two symptoms, gait abnormalities, as well as complaining poor physical status and poorer general conditions than the previous year. Less social actions was negatively associated with the falls. Conclusions The falling in the elderly walkers results from an outcome of combination of multifactors. Since the complex pathogenesis, it should be prevented by a combination of several methods.

OBJECTIVETo analyze the risk factors of the self-health management among Shenzhen's community residents by surveying the status of the self-health management.

METHODSMulti-stage cluster random sampling was used in this study. The estimated sample size was 6 400 of the study, and the actual number of the subjects was 6 413, who were from 32 communities in Shenzhen. All the subjects were investigated by using a self-devised questionnaire on July 2012. The contents of the questionnaire included sociodemographic characteristics of genders, age, household register, marriage suatus, degrees of education, income, investment of health, family population, the status of self-health management, self-health assessment, illness and injury in the last two weeks, chronic diseases and in hospital last year. Through binary logistic regression, factors influencing the self-health status were analyzed.

RESULTSThe proportion of self-health management among the residents was 29.47% (1 890/6 413), and the proportion was 37.26% (392/1 052) among the first ten chronic disease patients. The proportions of diabetes mellitus, anemia, cardiovascular disease, chronic bronchitis and hypertension patients were higher, which were 46.67% (35/75) , 41.94% (26/62), 38.96% (30/77) , 38.95% (37/95) and 38.93% (102/262) respectively. The binary regression analysis results showed that the effect factors of the self-health management were high age (OR = 1.22, 95% CI: 1.15-1.30) , females (OR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.07-1.34) , high culture (OR = 1.24, 95% CI: 1.15-1.34) , high monthly income (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.00- 1.13) , large family population (OR = 1.23, 95%CI: 1.10-1.38) , household register in Shenzhen (OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.00-1.29) , chronic diseases (OR = 1.22, 95% CI: 1.05-1.42).

CONCLUSIONThe proportion of self-health management among the community residents in Shenzhen was not high. We should put more effort on construction of health management system, and take action on intervention of the risk factor of health management status.

Age Factors ; Aged ; Anemia ; Bronchitis, Chronic ; Cardiovascular Diseases ; China ; epidemiology ; Chronic Disease ; Data Collection ; Demography ; Diabetes Mellitus ; Family Characteristics ; Female ; Health Status ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Income ; Logistic Models ; Risk Factors ; Self Care ; Sex Factors ; Socioeconomic Factors ; Surveys and Questionnaires