Gender and transportation access among community-dwelling seniors.

Purpose: This study estimates the prevalence of problems with transportation in a sample of community-dwelling seniors residing in an urban setting and investigates the role that gender plays in the ability of seniors to remain mobile in their communities.

Design And Methods: Data collected as part of a study assessing the prevalence and consequences of unmet needs for community-based services in a random sample of 839 elderly aged 75 years and older were employed in bivariate and multivariable analyses.

Results: The prevalence of problems with transportation was 23 per cent, with 33 per cent of females and 10 per cent of males categorized as having problems with transportation.

Association of unmet need with self-rated health in a community dwelling cohort of disabled seniors 75 years of age and over.

Self-rated health (SRH) is a measure of perceived health that has been shown to predict use of community services, functional decline, pain, and mortality. Many factors associated with SRH have been identified, but unmet need for physical assistance with activities of daily living (ADL) has not yet been examined. The objective of this paper is to examine the association between unmet need and SRH while accounting for the effects of other, previously identified, correlates of SRH.