Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this cross sectional study is to explore the environment factors associating with the frequency of going outdoors among Japanese community-dwelling dependent older people.
Method: The subjects were 77 day-rehabilitation services users. The multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the basic attributes and the environmental factors associating with the condition of lower frequency of going outdoors. The frequency of going outdoors in a week was set as the dependent variable. The subjects' environmental factors, sex, age, comorbidity, the level of activity of daily living, the location of the day-rehabilitation services providers, the weekly frequency of day-rehabilitation service use were used as the independent variables. Japanese version of Home And Community Environment (HACE) was used to scale the environmental factors.
Result: More than 3 points of the community mobility score in Japanese version of HACE, indicating higher existence of the community barriers, was associated with the condition of never going outdoors in a week excluding day rehabilitation service use (Adjusted Odds Ratio [95% Confidence Interval]: 8.84 [1.80-67.02]). Moreover, the similar result was shown in the secondary analysis, counting day rehabilitation service use as going outdoors in a week.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that community barriers were identified as important environmental factors which associate with the low frequency of going outdoors among Japanese community-dwelling dependent older people.
