What are your main health concerns?

Are you getting the help you need to address them?

Canadian researchers are looking at the health priorities of adults over 55 and asking if those priorities are being attended to. The results may surprise you.

The “WOW – What Older Women Want” and “Men’s Health” surveys were funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. They asked 5000 people to rank a list of 26 health priorities according to which ones they were most worried about and how much attention they felt these issues were receiving from health providers.

Here are the issues participants are most worried about, compared with how they perceive these concerns are being addressed by health care providers.

The top-ranking issues are related to functional decline – meaning that these are some of the issues that can eventually affect people’s ability to live independently. It is worth noting that many of these issues can be prevented or improved with the right care.

Researchers found that women and men tend to be most concerned about the same issues, but women are more concerned about their health overall. This could be because women’s traditional role as caregivers to children, parents and others means they are more aware of health and aging issues.

This research presents an opportunity to raise awareness of the health issues that we might want to think about and take steps to prevent as we get older. It also offers a chance for us to learn how to raise our concerns with health care providers and for providers to key into the unmet needs of older adults.

Check back here in the coming weeks for detailed posts about what you can do to prevent memory loss, depression, urine leakage, muscle weakness and falls!

Source: Older Women and Men’s Health Priorities in Canada: Towards gender-oriented prevention and services. http://www.criugm.qc.ca/images/stories/fichier/pdf/older_women_mens_health.pdf
Principal Investigator: Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal