Dear colleagues,
We are delighted to share the latest publication from Global Health Research and Policy with the HIFA community, in the hope of fostering academic exchanges and promoting the application of research findings in global health practice.
Paper Title:
Exploring social determinants of disability among older filipinos: insights from a polysocial score approach
Paper Link:
https://doi.org/10.1186/s41256-025-00453-7
Abstract:
Background
The rapid aging in the Philippines presents significant challenges, including high rates of activities of daily living (ADL) disability among older adults. While research has identified various social determinants of ADL disability, there is a gap in understanding how their joint impact on disability among older Filipinos. We adopted the polysocial score approach to assess these joint associations of multiple social factors with disability among older adults in the Philippines.
Methods
Individuals included in the analysis were from the Longitudinal Study of Ageing and Health in the Philippines. Twenty-nine social factors from five domains were included. The Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) model was employed to identify and rank key social determinants, which were then incorporated into a logistic regression model to derive the polysocial score, both continuously and in categories and assessed its association with ADL disability. Model performances were assessed by discrimination, calibration, and reclassification (compared to a reference model). All analyses were separated for men and women.
Results
We included 5,000 participants (37.0% men) with an average age of 68.3 years. The polysocial score included 19 social factors for men and 18 for women. Among men, the most significant predictors were the frequency of engaging in social activities and the number of friends they had contact with. Attending religious services outside the home and the frequency of attending social activities were the most important factors for women. Eleven social factors overlapped between men and women. Individuals with moderate or high polysocial scores exhibited reduced likelihood of experiencing ADL disability relative to those with low scores. We observed satisfactory model performance among men and women.
Conclusions
We identified important social factors for men and women and their joint association with ADL disability. The polysocial score could be used to design person-centered social interventions that promote health and support independence.
About Global Health Research and Policy
Global Health Research and Policy is an open access, multidisciplinary journal that publishes topic areas and methods addressing global health questions. These include various aspects of health research, such as health equity, health systems and policy, social determinants of health, disease burden, population health and other urgent and neglected global health issues.
Global Health Research and Policy aims to provide a forum for high quality researches on exploring regional and global health improvement and the solution for health equity.
We believe this article may bring valuable insights to the HIFA community. We welcome you to read, share and engage in discussions on the research content.
Best regards,
Bingqing Xi
Inernational Coordination Editor
Global Health Research and Policy Editorial Office