Objective To examine the effect of chronic disease multimorbidity on self-rated health among rural elderly, and to provide references for chronic disease prevention and treatment in aging populations.
Methods Using stratified multistage random sampling, we recruited 7 070 permanent residents aged ≥ 60 years in 108 villages of three prefectures across Shandong province. A face-to-face questionnaire survey was conducted among all the residents during August – September 2017 and the data on 5 514 residents were analyzed to explore the effect of multimorbidity on self-rated health.
Results Of the 5 514 participants, 2 878 (52.19%) reported a self-rated good health and 1 902 reported suffering from more than one chronic disease, with a multimorbidity prevalence rate of 34.5%. The results of unconditional multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that compared to the residents without chronic disease, the residents suffering from a chronic disease were more likely to report a self-rated poor health (odds ratio OR = 2.947, 95% confidence interval 95% CI: 2.547 – 3.404) and the residents with chronic disease multimorbidity were much more likely to report a self-rated poor health (OR = 6.675, 95% CI: 5.735 – 7.746) after adjusting for gender, age, education, family annual income, residence region, smoking, and alcohol drinking.
Conclusion The prevalence of chronic disease multimorbidity was high and the multimorbidity had a negative impact on self-rated health among the rural elderly in Shandong province.
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