This study aims to understand the behaviors of using health service for the middle- and old age elderly who are at high risk of metabolic syndrome and to explore relationships of demographis characteristics and the use of health service and health-promoting lifestyle.The design of this study is correlational research. A structured questionnaire was used to survey high risk population with metabolic syndrome from Beitou District of Taipei.Totally 246 questionnaires were distributed.
Subjects are mostly married females with an average age of 58.12. Subjects indicate their educational backgrounds as elementary school or below are in the majority (27.6%). The result shows that abnormal waist circumference ranks top among five risk factors of metabolism syndrome(72.8%); subjects in the age group of 40-49 and 50-59 generally exhibit one risk factor at 50.0% and 51.6% respectively. Subjects aged over 70 mostly exhibit at three risk factors (55.3%). The utilization rate of health service is 67.1% and the priority of the type of overall health service: hospitals rank top (46.8%), followed by health centers (19.1%) and clinics (13.0%). The users of health service tend to be more senior with an average age of 60.85 and most are unemployed (65.5%), with an educational background of elementary or illiterate (32.7%). A large number of the users have a personal medical history (72.7%), on long-term medication (55.8%) and with over three metabolic risk factors (36.4%). Those do not use health service account for 32.9% with a lower average age at 52.56, an educational background of high school/vocational high school (26.0%) and employed (59.3%). A majority of them do not have a personal history of chronic diseases (65.4%) nor on long-term medication (87.7%); generally possess one metabolic risk factor (61.7%). The reasons for not using health service are mainly: preoccupied by work (43.2%); healthy self-image without considering the need for regular checkups (43.2%). The score for health-promoting lifestyle profile is 71.1 with an above average performance. Among them, self-actualization is the best (72.28) while health responsibility (69.37) and recreation/leisure are the worst (63.10). Subjects with low educational background and on long-term medication show significantly low health-promoting lifestyle profile (p＜0.01) and there are significant differences among different age group with self-actualization, social support and recreation/leisure. Users of community health centers rank highest in health-promoting lifestyle profile but fail to reach statistical significance. Long-term medication and educational background may explain the variance of health-promoting lifestyle profile at 7.5%.
