The impacts of health promotion and prevent and delay disability in neighborhood long term care station – an example in Taiwan Social Housing

Neighborhood long-term care stations are an important part of the community care service system for the economically disadvantaged in Taiwan. This study explored the effects of health promotion, prevention, and delay of disability in neighborhood long-term care station in social housing.

Forty-nine residents who had participated in a neighborhood long-term care service from 2019 to 2021 were included. A one-way repeated-measures analysis of variance and the Kihon Checklist scores were used to analyze the differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fasting blood glucose, low-density lipoprotein, and triglyceride levels in the years before and after the prevention and delay disability care program and the health promotion course, respectively. Thirty-seven residents of the iHi Clinical Research Platform were used to find the corresponding control group with a frequency matching of 1:10 by age, sex, and comorbidities, and the differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fasting blood sugar, low-density lipoprotein, and triglyceride were determined using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

From 2019 to 2021, the Kihon Checklist scores decreased annually, and activities of daily living (ADL) reached a significant level of difference (p < 0.05). The test values for fasting blood sugar, low-density lipoprotein, and triglycerides improved and decreased annually, and fasting blood sugar levels differed significantly. The fasting blood sugar and systolic blood pressure of the neighborhood long-term care station residents were better than those of the control group.

The results suggest that health promotion courses at neighborhood long-term care station can improve residents’ ADL, fasting blood sugar levels, and systolic blood pressure.