Wiener Gesundheits- und Sozialsurvey Vienna Health and Social ...

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
women and 14 percent of men experience restrictions.
These numbers increase with age and are highest in the
age group above 75, where one in five men and one in
four women are affected. The number of people suffering
chronic restrictions increases drastically with age, from
17 percent among the youngest to 75 percent among the
oldest.
Dental health is strongly influenced by the age factor.
Loss of teeth increases drastically with age; one in two
women and 39 percent of men in the age group above 75
do not have any of their own teeth left. This is less apparent
among people of higher education and in better positions.
The indicator ADL was used to calculate a person´s ability
to carry out simple activities of daily living in the
age group above 60. The poorest results were found at
the lowest educational level for both men and women,
while between the other levels there were hardly any differences.
Men seemed to fair better than women
throughout. The higher a person’s income or position at
work, the better their ability to carry out activities of daily
living.
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Priority Measures
Social and individual health conditions were analysed
with the help of complex models, eliminating the factors
age, education and income. People’s subjective state of
health was found to have the most conspicuous positive
correlation with their subjective quality of life, as well as
their level of physical activity. Life events and a high
body mass index, on the other hand, have a strong negative
bearing on a person’s subjective state of health. Satisfaction
at work was found to be a positive factor for
women, while according to current data it had little influence
on men’s subjective state of health.
Men and women who suffer from a chronic disease are
often found to have experienced a number of life events
in the past. Life events experienced during childhood are
the only other factor that increases a person’s proneness
to diseases later on in life. There is a strong negative correlation
between chronic diseases and subjective quality
of life, particularly among women. The causality is not
clearly defined here, i.e. it is not evident whether diseases
influence the quality of life, or whether low quality of life
favours the development of diseases. None of the behavioural
factors examined were in any way related to the
occurrence of chronic diseases.
● Promote health at all political levels
● Strengthen people’s self-confidence and their capacity to act at all age levels
● Offer health services tailored to different target groups and social levels
● Make use of unused health potentials to avoid cardiovascular diseases and diseases of the locomotor system
● Enhance health promotion infrastructure
● Avoid accidents among older people, during adolescence and during sports activities
● Recognize diseases at an early stage, provide targeted therapy (particularly for cardiovascular diseases,
diseases of the locomotor system and diabetes) alleviate disabilities and improve the individual quality of
life
● Offer age- and gender-specific health programmes as well as targeted programmes for different social
groups
● Promote physical, mental, social and economic independence
● Establish measures to avoid poverty
WIENER GESUNDHEITS- UND SOZIALSURVEY