Population aging has become an important social subject for our society to cope with because the number of older adults who need various medical and social supports have increased sharply. Older adults would like to stay in their community as they age; health and social services, home- and community- based services, help them remain in the community independently. However, rural older adults consistently have been excluded from the public social and health services. In particular, rural older adults with functional disabilities are experiencing difficulties accessing those services because of their limited mobility and rural environment where social resources are insufficient.
Previous studies mostly focused on service delivery systems for older adults and linkage of health and social services. Therefore, the present study investigated the current service use of rural older adults with functional disabilities and identified the barriers that hinder them from accessing and using health and social services.
To identify the barriers of service use, this study conducted surveys among rural older adults and health and social service providers in rural areas. Additionally, qualitative interviews among rural older adults with functional disabilities were conducted to explore their use of services and difficulties accessing services. Focus group interviews were also carried out to identify the problems delivering services to rural older adults with functional disabilities.
This study revealed that the rural older adults with functional disabilities suffer from physical and mental health deterioration. They visited doctor’s office more often than healthy rural older adults. Similarly, they more often used social services than rural older adults without functional disabilities. However, they were more likely to experience unmet service needs compared to their counterparts, which means that rural older adults with functional disabilities receive insufficient health and social services for their health status. The main barriers to access health and social services for rural older adults with functional disabilities were their limited mobility, lack of transportation, insufficiency of services, and financial burden.
Therefore, this study suggested building up a regional system to manage various social and health services and deliver the collaborated services to rural older adults. To improve the delivery system, this study suggested future policy directions and proposed several plans for rural older adults with functional disabilities.



Researchers: An Sok, Park DaeShik, and Kim KyungIn
Research period: 2016. 11. ∼ 2017. 5.
E-mail address: ansok@krei.re.kr