The Influence of Health Promoting Practices on the Quality of Life of Community Adults in Hong Kong

The importance of a healthy lifestyle is receiving increasing attention due to its impact on health and well-being. However, very few studies have been done on health promoting practices of the general public in Hong Kong. The present study aimed to identify the patterns of health promoting practices of the general public in Hong Kong, to compare health promoting practices across gender and education levels, and to examine the relationship between health promoting practices and quality of life. A total of 941 community adults were recruited using a randomized household survey design. Results revealed that a large proportion of participants reported practicing various types of health promoting behavior related to healthy food choice, engaging in stress management strategies, and refraining from health compromising behavior such as smoking and drinking excessively. Female participants were more likely to choose healthy food, refrain from smoking and drinking alcohol excessively, and take vitamin supplements, whereas male participants were more likely to exercise regularly. Both men and women with higher levels of education were more likely to report not smoking, not drinking alcohol excessively, and participating in social activities. Women with higher levels of education were also more likely to engage in relaxing activities but less likely to report exercising regularly and sleeping sufficiently. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that stress management and social relations significantly predicted better quality of life for both male and female participants, and types of preventive health behavior were significant predictors of quality of life for female participants only. Results highlighted the importance of advocating health promoting practices among the general public in Hong Kong. Implications for future practice were discussed.     

Driven to Care: The Car,Automobility and Social Work

Abstract

Welfare practices are invariably represented in static and sedentary ways and their mobilities ignored. This paper corrects for this by examining the car and auto‐mobility in social work. The car is not just a means to reaching vulnerable children and other service users quickly, and a mobile office, but a space where significant casework goes on and deeply meaningful ‘therapeutic journeys’ happen. The car carries similar emotional meanings and possibilities for workers as a space within which to contain the anxieties and emotions they routinely confront in their work. Drawing on mobile social science and psychoanalytic theory, the paper shows how the power and meanings of auto‐mobility in ‘car therapy’ are products of the design of cars and the distinct rhythms and mobilities they produce in themselves. The car in social work is conceptualised as a ‘fluid container’ for the processing of personal troubles, emotion and key life changes. The theoretical implications of this argument for the social science of mobilities are drawn out.     

Parent–child mobility practices: revealing ‘cracks’ in the automobility system

ABSTRACT

Many commentators are concerned about automobility’s ill-effects and seek a shift away from auto dependence towards more sustainable transport. Little research, however, considers the ways that parent–child mobilities are linked to such a transition. Through the lens of social practice theory, this paper explores how parents travelling with young children preserve and challenge automobility as they enact auto dependency, multimodality and altermobility. The paper argues that it is vital to understand these practices for identifying ‘cracks’ in automobility and the possibility of more sustainable and equitable daily mobilities. The research is based on qualitative parent interviews undertaken in Vancouver (British Columbia).     

Qualitative analysis in gay men's health research: comparing thematic, critical discourse, and conversation analysis

Gay men's health typically relies on traditional forms of qualitative analysis, such as thematic analysis, and would benefit from a diversity of analytic approaches. Such diversity offers public health researchers a breadth of tools to address different kinds of research questions and, thus, substantiate different types of social phenomenon relevant to the health and wellbeing of gay men. In this article, I compare and contrast three qualitative analytic approaches: thematic, critical discourse, and conversation analysis. I demonstrate and distinguish their key analytic assumptions by applying each approach to a single data excerpt taken from a public health interview conducted for a broader study on gay men's health. I engage in a discussion of each approach in relation to three themes: its utility for gay men's health, its approach to dilemmas of voice, and its capacity for reflexivity. I advocate that qualitative researchers should capitalise on the full range of qualitative analytic approaches to achieve the goals of gay men's health. However, I specifically encourage qualitative researchers to engage with conversation analysis, not only because of its capacity to resolve dilemmas of voice and to achieve reflexivity, but also for its ability to capture forms of social life hitherto undocumented through thematic and critical discourse analysis.     

Reproducing inequalities: Luck, wallets, and the enduring effects of childhood health

In this article, I argue that research on social stratification, on intergenerational transmission of inequalities, and on the theory of factor payments and wage determination will be strengthened by studying the role played by early childhood health. I show that the inclusion of such a factor requires researchers to integrate theories in each of these fields with new theories linking early childhood health conditions and events that occur at later stages in the life course of individuals, particularly physical and mental health as well as disability and mortality. The empirical evidence I gather shows that early childhood health matters for the achievement of or social accession to, adult social class positions. Even if the magnitude of associations is not overwhelming, it is not weaker than that found between adult social accession and other, more conventional and better-studied individual characteristics, such as educational attainment. It is very likely that the evidence presented in this article grossly underplays the importance of early childhood health for adult socioeconomic achievement.     

Is Local Financial Health Associated with Citizens’ Quality of Life?

Few studies have analysed the results of public management in terms of social welfare. However, the financial health of local governments is in decline, which means that they are no longer able to provide public services that require financial obligations. This generally results in a reduction in the quality/quantity of public services provided by local governments, thus affecting citizens’ quality of life, since the most important welfare needs are usually related to public services. This study is an original approach to understanding the importance of the financial health of local governments in relation to social welfare. We selected a sample composed of 76 Spanish cities for the period 2008–2010. The results show that citizens who live in municipalities with good financial health have a higher quality of life than others. In general, citizens from municipalities governed by right-wing parties with low political competition tend to have higher levels of quality of life.     

社会支持与精神健康——基于广东六市新生代农民工的实证调查

近年来一些社会突发事件如富士康骇人听闻的十几连跳自杀事件和外来务工青年（多为新生代农民工）的犯罪问题等,使新生代农民工的精神健康问题备受关注。本研究对广东省新生代农民工最为集中的六个城市进行实证调研后发现,新生代农民工的总体精神健康状况良好,但是他们对当前生活的满意度较低,在自我价值预期和现实生活需求中存在着明显的心理落差。此外,在将社会支持分解为教育支持、经济支持、社会网络支持、媒体舆论支持和政策性支持五个指标对新生代农民工的精神健康状况进行检验分析后发现,不同的社会支持方式对他们的精神健康影响程度、影响效果存在一定差异。     

A Gender Lens on Quality of Life: The Role of Sense of Community,Perceived Social Support,Self-Reported Health and Income

Quality of life (QoL) refers to a subjective evaluation that is embedded in a cultural, social and environmental context. It is a multidimensional concept and its assessment covers four domains: physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environment. Although many studies report on QoL, literature rarely addressed the question of the QoL predictors from a gender perspective. Present study aimed at investigating gender differences in the determinants of QoL. Specifically, gender was considered as a moderator in the relationship between predictors of QoL (i.e. socio-demographic characteristics, perceived health, income, social support and sense of community) and each dimension of QoL. 654 Italian adults participated in the study. Results show that men outscore women on the physical, the psychological and the environmental domains of QoL. Considering determinants of QoL, sense of community and self-reported health operate in a similar fashion for both genders. On the contrary, social support is more predictive for women’s QoL, whereas the income level is more significant for men’s QoL. Implications are discussed.     

The Effects of Childhood,Adult, and Community Socioeconomic Conditions on Health and Mortality among Older Adults in China

Using a large, nationally representative longitudinal sample of Chinese aged 65 and older, this study examines the effects of childhood, adult, and community socioeconomic conditions on mortality and several major health outcomes. The role of social mobility is also tested. We find that childhood socioeconomic conditions exert long-term effects on functional limitations, cognitive impairment, self-rated health, and mortality independent of adult and community socioeconomic conditions. Achieved conditions matter for most outcomes as well, considering that adult and community socioeconomic conditions have additional impacts on health among Chinese elders. The majority of the effects of childhood conditions are not mediated by adult and community conditions. The results also show that social mobility and health in later life are linked in complex ways and that psychosocial factors have marginal explanatory power for the effects of socioeconomic conditions. Overall, this study provides new longitudinal evidence from China to support the notion that health and mortality at older ages are influenced by long-term and dynamic processes structured by the social stratification system. We discuss our findings in the context of the life course and ecological perspective, emphasizing that human development is influenced by a nexus of social experiences that impact individuals throughout life.     

Market insurance,social insurance,and education

We show that social disability insurance may better society-wide welfare even when there is a perfect private market for similar insurance. In essence, the public system complements the private. The latter cover risks when personal characteristics are known, whereas the first mitigates effects of unfavorable characteristics. Large social insurance benefits will induce more education among agents with expected good health. These same agents also experience a negative redistributive income effect from social insurance. Incentive effects to redistribution are therefore nonstandard since individuals that are adversely affected by redistribution will respond with more educational vigor.This research has in part been supported by NRC-Ruhrgas. Comments from seminar participants at the German-Norwegian conference on the economics of social insurance in Bergen 1993, and particularly from two referees, whose comments largely improved the presentation, are appreciated.     

The marginal cost of public funds with an aging population

"As populations in the United States and other advanced economies grow older, the burden of social security and health care financing is expected to rise markedly. Payroll, income, and other taxes on working populations are projected to rise accordingly. The marginal welfare cost to workers of social security and other public expenditures is analyzed within the context of a two-period life cycle model. By relaxing separability assumptions that have become common in the literature, the theoretical structure properly incorporates the effect of these public expenditures on labor supply. Comparative statics results indicate that changing age structure is likely to raise the marginal welfare to workers of social security, education, and other public expenditures. Illustrative calculations for the United States confirm this result, suggesting that the cost to workers of incremental social security benefits may easily double by 2025-2050."     

Aging society,health and the environment

In a general-equilibrium OLG model with endogenous longevity, a political economy and a social planner solution are contrasted mainly with respect to public supplies of health care and environment protection. The latter is relatively more supported by the young because its beneficial effect on longevity takes more time to occur but then lasts longer; while the old relatively prefer health spending. With population aging, political claims for health care expenditure are self-reinforcing. This framework is able to generate a quite rich set of results. In the political economy larger health care/consumption and health care/environmental quality ratios are implemented. Changes in risk aversion, production pollution, health inputs’ elasticity of substitution may have opposite impacts across regimes. More complete annuity markets improve welfare. Further comparative statics is analyzed.     

Measuring Social Capital in Hamilton, Ontario

Social capital has been studied by academics for more than 20?years and within the past decade there has been an explosion of growth in research linking social capital to health. This paper investigates social capital in Hamilton, Ontario by way of a telephone survey of 1,002 households in three neighbourhood groups representing high, mixed and low socio-economic status (SES). A Social Capital Measurement Tool is proposed as a straightforward way to account for differences in social capital perceptions and actions among residents. Consistent with the literature, the paper found that there was a strong association between social capital perceptions and health, particularly mental health and life stress. Social capital was greater in the high and mixed SES neighbourhoods and much weaker in the low SES neighbourhoods. With respect to social capital actions, both volunteering and voting was associated with positive overall health and mental health. Finally, the paper identified the social capital ??elite????respondents with high or above average perceptions and who participated in the two social capital actions??voting and volunteering. Prominent among the social capital elite in Hamilton is the ??health wealthy?? senior, a positive development for the continued social well-being of the city.     

Quality of life indicators and health: Current status and emerging conceptions

Quality of life is an increasingly common theme in the health status and health promotion literatures. Six approaches that consider quality of life and health are reviewed. These are (a) health-related quality of life; (b) quality of life as social diagnosis in health promotion; (c) quality of life among persons with developmental disabilities; (d) quality of life as social indicators; (e) the Centre for Health Promotion (University of Toronto) model, and (f) Lindstrom's quality of life model. Each approach is considered as to its emphasis on objective or subjective indicators, individual or system-level measurement, value-laden or value-neutral assumptions, and potential relationship to social policy and social change goals. The links among the social indicators, quality of life, and health promotions areas are examined.     

Minimising Misery: A New Strategy for Public Policies Instead of Maximising Happiness?

This paper raises the issue whether public policy should focus on minimizing unhappiness rather than maximizing happiness. Using a cross-sectional multi-country dataset with 57,000 observations from 29 European countries, we show that unhappiness varies a great deal more across social groups than (high levels of) happiness does. Our findings are robust to several alternative specifications, using both self-reported life satisfaction and self-reported happiness, and different cut-off points for defining unhappiness (dissatisfaction) and high levels of happiness (satisfaction). While misery appears to strongly relate to broad social issues (such as unemployment, poverty, social isolation), bliss might be more of a private matter, with individual strategies and attitudes, hidden from the eye of a policy-maker. The social cost of unhappiness may be also reflected in the immense cost of mental health problems. Preventing avoidable unhappiness, however, needs to be complemented with other strategies for promoting happiness, perhaps on a more decentralized level, given the different causes of bliss and that of misery.     

The Life Course,Cohort Dynamics,and International Differences in Aging Trajectories

In recent years, population health research has focused on understanding the determinants of later-life health. Two strands of that work have focused on (1) international comparisons of later-life health and (2) assessing the early-life origins of disease and disability and the importance of life course processes. However, the less frequently examined intersection of these approaches remains an important frontier. The present study contributes to the integration of these approaches. We use the Health and Retirement Study family of data sets and a cohort dynamic approach to compare functional health trajectories across 12 high-income countries and to examine the role of life course processes and cohort dynamics in contributing to variation in those trajectories. We find substantial international variation in functional health trajectories and an important role of cohort dynamics in generating that variation, with younger cohorts often less healthy at comparable ages than the older cohorts they are replacing. We further find evidence of heterogeneous effects of life course processes on health trajectories. The results have important implications for future trends in morbidity and mortality as well as public policy.     

Are Area-Level Measures of Employment Associated with Health Behaviours and Outcomes?

Accessible employment suited to residents’ needs is an important equity issue and social determinant of health and wellbeing, and a balanced jobs-housing ratio within a region has the potential to provide health benefits. This paper aims to provide evidence on the associations between employment and health, and the potential pathways, as well as identifying spatial indicators that can be used to measure urban employment, a construct of liveability. We used 2011 census data to create and test two area-level spatial measures of urban employment with geo-coded population health behaviour and outcome data (2011 VicHealth survey) in 5206 employed adults living in urban Victoria, Australia. Those living in areas with higher levels of local employment had reduced odds of a longer commute (OR 0.87). The odds of a longer commute time was also greater for those who lived in an area where more people commuted to work by private vehicle (OR 1.20), and less for those who lived in local areas where more people travelled to work by public transport (OR 0.85) or active travel (OR 0.80). The odds of reporting longer sitting times was less for those who lived in a local area where more people commuted to work by private vehicle (OR 0.65). Those who had a longer commute times, regardless of travel mode, had greater odds of reporting more sitting during a typical weekday (OR 1.67). In turn, those who spent more time sitting had significantly greater odds of reporting poorer self-rated health (OR 1.34). Such work provides evidence to policy-makers to help build the argument for which area-level attributes are needed to support urban employment across a region.     

Social Economic Accounts System (SEAS): Toward a comprehensive,community-level assessment procedure

While most research on social and economic indicators has been developed from the national perspective, this article presents a comprehensive community-level Social Economic Accounts System (SEAS). The system is designed to enable social scientists, program developers, and public policy officials to better understand the effects of various types of public investments upon the quality of life of individuals, the relative social position of groups of people, and the social well-being of the community. In order to be useful for such diverse purposes as development of community theory, program evaluation, and policy formulation, the SEAS is: community-wide, covering most aspects of community life which may influence or be influenced by investment projects; systematic in its approach to causal factors behind the patterns of stability and change in key variables; sensitive to distinguishing features of communities which indicate special needs and which may affect the operation and success of investment projects; applicable to time series analyses for recording and evaluating change; and, oriented toward the comparison of communities receiving investment projects and to other communities and norms. The SEAS builds upon community social and economic theory, the program perspectives of federal and state categorical programs (e.g. health care, education), and the public policy orientations of community and national development. Data have been specified for 15 sectors of community life (e.g. education, economic base, health), and organized under three generic sets of items: state variables (i.e., data describing the lives of people in the community), system variables (i.e., data describing the operations of institutions which affect people's lives), and relevant condition variables (i.e., data describing system external variables which have an effect upon the state and system characteristics). More than 400 items are included in the SEAS.     

Women’s mobility and ‘transport-related social exclusion’ in Bishkek

This paper analyses gendered mobilities in Bishkek in the space of the most popular form of public transport: the minibus, or ‘marshrutka’. As the means by which women often access various important sites of daily life, the marshrutka itself is a site of negotiation and interaction. Utilizing theories of mobility and empirical data, we argue that marshrutkas are spaces that can give rise to two dichotomous conditions: positive marshrutka experiences may increase the social mobility of female passengers and subsequently increase social empowerment and influence, while negative ones can provide the grounds for social exclusion and gender inequality.     

Mental health differences between men and women caregivers,BRFSS 2009

This study uses data from the 2009 Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System (BRFSS) to examine differences between male and female caregivers by demographics, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and the effect of social support on HRQOL. Roughly two-thirds of caregivers were women, and demographic characteristics differed among men and women caregivers. Women caregivers reported significantly more mentally and physically unhealthy days than men, but there were no differences between men and women in general health or life satisfaction. Men were significantly more likely to report that they rarely or never received social support. Despite this, the effect of social support on HRQOL was stronger in men than in women. Implications of these findings for caregiver support programs are discussed.