The Emergence of Institutional Elder Care in China

描述（由申请人提供）：近年来，中国主要城市的养老机构迅速增长。这一新发展是为了应对中国消费者对老年人正规长期护理（LTC）需求的不断增长。然而，目前对这些机构、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人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，来自美国和中国的经验丰富的LTC研究人员团队建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养老院数据收集工具，可供全国各地的其他人使用。使用此工具，通过结构化的调查，在设施层面上的组织属性和聚集的居民特征的系统的定量数据将收集来自中国两个主要城市的养老院的代表性样本：天津和南京。将与设施管理人员进行焦点小组讨论，以确保调查工具在最后确定之前的适当性，并与老年居民及其家庭成员进行讨论，以定性了解机构护理的文化含义。通过对每个城市的抽样养老院进行深入研究，本项目试图提供其组织和居民特征的全面概况。本研究所获得的启示将丰富对中国传统文化和家庭规范的理论理解，以面对养老方面的社会变化。研究结果还将告知机构LTC服务的潜在消费者和对这一领域的政策制定，规划和法规感兴趣的政府机构。这个合作项目是互惠互利的，为加强伙伴关系和促进参与的美国和中国大学学者之间的知识交流提供了一个很好的机会。从长远来看，研究团队计划以该项目的经验和发现为基础，在多个城市或国家层面继续并扩大这一研究领域，最终将有助于塑造一个可行的长期护理系统，以满足中国人口快速老龄化的迫切需求。这项研究将主要在中国进行，与南开大学（天津）的关新平和南京大学（南京）的冯晓天合作，作为NIH的延伸。公共卫生改革：中国的人口正在迅速老龄化，将机构性长期护理作为一项政策的压力也越来越大。这项合作研究将开发和测试在中国两个城市的养老院的调查，以记录此类设施在中国的增长和特点。

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.