Objectives: Service accessibility plays a pivotal role in older adults' mental health. However, accessibility measures used in previous studies are either objective or perceived. This study aimed to integrate both objective and perceived measures of service accessibility to explore the relationship between environmental cognition on service accessibility and mental health in older adults and the pathways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Dementia care creates ethical and legal dilemmas due to the struggle to balance the quality of care and personhood. Disagreement and conflict in caregiving relationships are common. However, limited attention has been given to particular stressful circumstances, such as care practice and decision disagreements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: The construction of an Age-Friendly City (AFC) requires active contribution from relevant interest groups including older adults, nonprofit organizations, and policy-makers. However, given that relevant interest groups may have limited resources, knowledge, and skills, as well as unique contextual factors, they often require help from intermediary organizations-actors that aim to build interest groups' capabilities. Our objectives were to examine the functions of universities, as an example of intermediary organizations, in facilitating the construction of an AFC, and identify critical factors that enable intermediary organizations to perform their functions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAgeism is a global challenge and a public health concern that the recent COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated. Existing research has mainly focused on individual factors, overlooking the association between the neighborhood-built environment and ageism. This study examined this association and whether its effect varied among areas possessing different socioeconomic characteristics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Neighborhood environments are increasingly recognized as associated with mental well-being among older adults. However, their underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study investigated mediating effects of cognitive and structural social capital (SC) in relationships between neighborhood environments and mental well-being among older adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaintaining good cognition is crucial in later life. However, most existing research has focused on individual factors impacting cognition, and few studies have investigated the association between neighborhood built environment and older adults' cognition. This study examined the association between neighborhood built environment and cognition among community-dwelling older adults and identified variations in this association between different age groups in the older population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Older adults were perceived as a vulnerable group during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the health and mental health challenges they faced. The pandemic was accompanied by an "infodemic" of overabundant and questionable information that has affected older adults' mental health. As the infodemic and ageist narratives were prevalent online, more anxiety symptoms have been induced among older adults who used social media.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Knowledge of how intrinsic capacity (IC) and neighbourhood physical environment shape functional ability (FA) trajectories in later life remains understudied. We investigated four-year trajectories of IC and their impact on FA trajectories and the association between neighbourhood physical environment and FA trajectories among community-dwelling older adults in Hong Kong, China.
Methods: We conducted a four-wave longitudinal study from 2014 to 2017 in Hong Kong with 2,081 adults aged 65 and above.
Little is known about the accumulative impacts of neighbourhood physical environments on older adults' depressive symptoms over time. Based on a cohort study of 2081 older adults in Hong Kong, this study examined longitudinal relationships between neighbourhood physical environments and depressive symptoms among older adults, with a particular focus on the moderating effects of terrain slope and individual functional ability using latent growth curve modelling. Results indicated that the availability of community centres and passive leisure facilities reduced depressive symptoms over time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
November 2021
Objectives: Neighborhood built environments (BEs) are increasingly recognized as being associated with late-life depression. However, their pathways are still understudied. This study investigates the mediating effects of physical and social activities (PA and SA) and functional ability (FA) in the relationships between BEs and late-life depression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial and civic participation are important tenets for both the age-friendly city and active aging frameworks promoted by the World Health Organization. Yet older adults are often under-represented in civic affairs. This study examines the effects of using photo-voice as a method in facilitating older adults' civic participation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: There is little understanding about how rapid urban development has affected the extent to which communities are able to optimize health and participation opportunities for older adults in Hong Kong. Our objective was to examine what older residents perceive to be the shortcomings of their communities in meeting their psychosocial and physical needs as they age.
Research Design And Methods: In reference to the WHO Age-Friendly Cities Project Methodology: Vancouver Protocol, we conducted nine focus groups comprising 65 participants for an Age-Friendly City baseline assessment in two districts in Hong Kong, China.