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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Song-iee Hong, MA and Li-Mei Chen, MSW, PhD. George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, 314-935-8650, shong@gwbmail.wustl.edu

In light of various causes of health status among older adults, this study investigates how environmental press and coping strategies affect the trajectory of personal competences. Underlining personal competencies as a part of multidimensional construct of Lawton's Environmental Press Theory, we assessed the impact of residential setting, relocation, and life-style factors on personal competencies guided by Johnson and Wolinsky's (1993) structure of health status among older adults overtime. We used three waves of the Longitudinal Study on Aging (LSOA) II with nationally representative sample with 70 years older (N=5559). To capture longitudinal trajectory, Latent Growth Curve Modeling was used. Disease, disability, functional dependence, and perceived health captured personal competencies. As predictors, institutionalization, residential relocation, life style (alcohol consumption, exercise, and smoking), and socio-demographics were analyzed. Residential type and relocation influenced individual initial status and change rate of comorbidity. Exercise was important predictor in tracking changes in personal competencies. The causality between four measures of personal competencies was detected. The change in comorbidity of diseases leads to change of disability. The severer disability at baseline causes higher initial status and rapider changes of functional dependence. With the changes in functional dependence, individual initial status of perceived health was different and its change rate fluctuated overtime. We found that residential type and life-style factors are important in preserving better health overtime. Through structural equation modeling for theory building, these observations add to the understanding of temporal properties of environmental press on personal competencies trajectories, which remains underdeveloped in the environmental gerontology theories.

Learning Objectives: The learner in this session will be able to

• Demonstrate the application of environmental gerontology theories in understanding the relationship between environmental press and personal competency in late life.
• Interpret the causal mechanism between the structures of health status underlining the process of personal competencies of older adults overtime.
• Apply the findings to build a synthesized model from the linkage between Lawton’s environmental press theory and Johnson and Wolinsky’s structure of health status.

Keywords: Aging, Environmental Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

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