Systematic Review And Qualitative Research Of Older People’s Vulnerability To Heatwave

Objectives:Through systematic review to collect research evidence regarding to older people’s vulnerability to heat waves, to know the status of community elderly coping with heat waves, to examine research results of systematic review, to provide evidence for conducting medical service to help elderly survive heat waves, to provide basis for reducing older people’s vulnerability to heat waves and reducing health risk of heat waves.Subjects and methods:1 Systematic reviewFirstly, search strategy, inclusion and exclusion standard were made, and search literatures according to search strategy in database including EBSCO, OVID, PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Wiley, CNKI, VIP and Wanfang, after excluding duplicates, choose literatures according to title and abstract, then get full text, and choose literatures according to full text; then analysis these full texts and make conclusion.2 Qualitative researchIndividual in-depth interview outline was made, random sampling method was adopted,22 elderly were chosen in one community in Jinan from December,2014 to March 2015. Inclusion standard were:age large than 65, clear conscious, no barrier on communicating, finish interview and participate volunteer; exclusion standard were severe cognitive impairment and mentally ill. Deep interview was adopted, recorder and memo were used, and after transferring into text, Nvivo 10.0 was used to analysis text.Results:1. Systematic reviewFinally 22 articles were included, of which 8 were quantitative studies,4 were qualitative studies and 10 were reviews. Quantitative and qualitative studies were conducted in Korea, Germany, Italy, Australia, France, Britain and USA. Vulnerability of older people to heat waves included environment, health status, demographic and resource factors. Environment factor included living environment, housing environment and facilities in the house. Health status factor included physical, psychological and pharmacy factors. Demographic factor included age, gender, marriage, nationality, income, education and occupation. Resource factor included available resource and whether using resource and adopt behavior during heat waves.2. Qualitative interview22 elderly took part in interview, average age was 72.3±6.05, and 72.7%(n=16) were female, and 6 were male.10 experienced flood,4 experienced earthquake,2 experienced disaster relief by production and 1 experienced anti-Japanese war.Result involved living environment, community resource, risk perception, cooling facility, adapting behavior and community resource.2 mentioned living environment, and community resource included medical resource in the community, including surgical procedure and basic medical treatment insurance outpatient service regulation. Facility included air conditioning and fan, and adapt behavior were using air conditioning and fan, going out in the morning, finding cooling place in the community.Conclusion:This study through the systematic review by searching aboard and domestic databases, developed concept and framework of older people’s vulnerability to heat waves and related risk factors, and interviewed community elderly to know their experienced risk, risk perception and adaptive behaviors.