The Emergence of Institutional Elder Care in China

描述(申请人提供)：近年来，中国各大城市的养老机构迅速增长。这一新的发展是为了应对中国不断增长的消费者对老年人正式长期护理(LTC)的需求。然而，目前人们对这些机构及其组织、结构、融资和居民特征知之甚少。这些基本信息对于了解推动正规老年护理服务发展的社会、文化和市场力量至关重要。在这个项目中，来自美国的一组经验丰富的长期护理研究人员和中国提议研究中国机构养老领域的最新发展。基于他们在美国和中国研究机构LTC系统的专业知识和经验，研究团队将开发一种可供全国其他人使用的养老院数据采集工具。使用该工具，通过结构化调查，将从中国的两个主要城市：天津和南京的具有代表性的养老院样本中收集设施层面关于组织属性和聚集的居民特征的系统量化数据。将与设施管理人员进行焦点小组讨论，以确保调查工具在定稿之前是充分的，并与老年居民及其家庭成员进行讨论，以定性地了解院舍护理的文化含义。这个项目通过对每个城市的安老院抽样进行深入研究，试图提供一个关于其组织和居民特征的全面概况。通过本研究获得的见解将丰富对中国传统文化和家庭规范的理论理解，以应对社会养老的变化。研究结果还将向机构LTC服务的潜在消费者和对这一领域的政策制定、规划和监管感兴趣的政府机构提供信息。这一合作项目是互惠互利的，并为加强伙伴关系和促进参与的美中大学学者之间的学术交流提供了一个很好的机会。从长远来看，研究团队计划在该项目的经验和发现的基础上，继续并在多个城市或国家层面扩展这一研究路线，最终将有助于形成一个可行的长期TC系统，以满足中国人口快速老龄化的迫在眉睫的需求。作为国立卫生研究院的延伸，这项研究将主要在南开大学(天津)的中国和南京大学(南京)的冯小天进行。公共卫生评论：中国的人口正在迅速老龄化，要求将机构长期护理作为一项政策的压力越来越大。这项合作研究将对中国两个城市的养老院进行调查，以记录中国养老院的发展和特点。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There has been a rapid growth of elder care institutions across major Chinese cities in recent years. This new development is in response to rising consumer demands for formal long-term care (LTC) for the elderly in China. Yet little is currently known about these institutions, their organization, structure, financing and residents' characteristics. Such basic information is essential to understand the social, cultural and market forces driving the development of formal elder care services. In this project, a team of experienced LTC researchers from the U.S. and China propose to study the recent developments in the institutional elder care sector in China. Building upon their expertise and experience studying the institutional LTC system in both the U.S. and China, the study team will develop a nursing home data collection instrument that can be readily used by others throughout the country. Using this instrument through structured surveys, systematic quantitative data at the facility-level on the organizational attributes and aggregated resident characteristics will be collected from a representative sample of elder care homes in two major cities in China: Tianjin and Nanjing. Focus group discussions will be conducted with facility administrators to insure adequacy of the survey instrument before it is finalized, and with elderly residents and their family members for a qualitative understanding of the cultural meanings of institutional care. Through a thorough study of the sampled elder care homes in each city, this project seeks to provide a comprehensive profile of their organizational and residents' characteristics. Insights gained from this study will enrich a theoretical understanding of traditional Chinese culture and family norms in the face of social changes in elder care. Research findings will also inform potential consumers of institutional LTC services and government agencies interested in policy making, planning and regulations in this area. This collaborative project is mutually beneficial and provides a great opportunity to strengthen the partnership relationship and promote intellectual exchanges among scholars from the participating U.S. and Chinese universities. In the long term, the study team plans to build on experiences and findings from this project to continue and expand this line of research in multiple cities or at the national level, which ultimately will contribute to shaping a viable LTC system to meet the impending demand of a fast aging population in China. This research will be done primarily in China in collaboration with Xinping Guan at Nankai University (in Tianjin) and with Xiaotian Feng at Nanjing University (in Nanjing), as an extension of NIH. PUBLIC HEALTH REVELANCE: China's population is aging rapidly and pressures are building to grow institutional long term care as a policy. This collaborative study will develop and test a survey of nursing homes in two Chinese cities to document the growth and character of such facilities in China.