Description and Analysis of Health Promoting Behaviors among older people: Assessing Healthy Lifestyle

With increased life expectancy and improved health care, elderly population is growing increasingly. Common diseases of ageing have multiple physical and psychological effects on individual and family, as most of difficulties may be prevented by choosing a healthy lifestyle. Regarding to health promotion approaches amongst older people; healthy lifestyle may improve quality of life, productivity and reduce physical and mental problems. Accordingly, this study was conducted to assess the lifestyle of older people in Urmia-Iran.

Quantitative method was used in this descriptive- analytic study to recruit 460 older people living in their home by applying Multi-Stage Cluster Sampling. Data was collected based on healthy lifestyle assessment questionnaire (Iranian version) and analysed by using descriptive statistics.

Demographic characteristic of the study population indicated that 58.3% of them were males. The average age of elderly was 68.74±7.67. Nearly all the participants (92.2%) were living with their family members. Interestingly, 66.5% were affected by chronic diseases. It was also found that two-thirds of the older people could cope with stressful situations.

It is necessary to consider appropriate interventions especially educational strategies in order to promote healthy lifestyles for seniors who live alone, suffer from chronic disease, and have low education.