 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Lucinda Deason-Howell, PhD, MPA, The Department of Public Administration & Urban Studies, University of Akron, 265 Polsky Building, Akron, OH 44325-7904, 330-972-5596, deason@uakron.edu
Approximately 1.6 million older Americans and people with disabilities are the sickest and most vulnerable populations residing in about 16,700 nursing homes in the United States. The Medicare and Medicaid programs pay billions of dollars annually for medical care delivery to residents living in the nations’ nursing homes; in 2000 the industry earned $100 billion. The Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987 (NHRA) charged the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and state inspection agencies with regulating facilities that receive Medicaid and/or Medicare monies to assure that residents receive quality of care, quality of life, residents’ rights, and comprehensive resident assessments by improving the state inspection process and toughening enforcement by imposing monetary sanctions.
Despite the goals of the NHRA, malnutrition has been identified as a major problem of the oldest old population. Various studies have noted that 35 to 85 percent of nursing home residents suffer or die from malnutrition nationally. Malnutrition is a common, yet unavoidable problem in nursing homes. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence the prevalence of malnutrition across the United States from the micro- to the macro-system levels using Urie Bronfebrenner’s ecological model. To gain a better understanding of how these factors interact, I conducted an ecological analysis (multi-level analysis). The results of this study indicate that factors at various levels contribute to the prevalence of malnutrition among nursing home residents in the United States.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Aging, Dietary Assessment
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.