Manufactured home villages in Australia – a melting pot of chronic disease?
Karin Robinson A D , Abhijeet Ghosh B and Elizabeth Halcomb C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Chronic Care, Grand Pacific Health, Scenic Drive, Nowra, NSW 2541, Australia.
B Planning and Performance, COORDINARE – South Eastern NSW PHN, PO Box 325, Fairy Meadow, NSW 2519, Australia.
C School of Nursing, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: krobinson@gph.org.au
Australian Journal of Primary Health 23(1) 97-103 https://doi.org/10.1071/PY15172
Submitted: 22 October 2015 Accepted: 15 March 2016 Published: 25 July 2016
Abstract
Manufactured home villages (MHVs) are an increasingly popular housing option for older Australians. This paper reports a cross-sectional survey that sought to describe the health status and health service access of MHV residents. The survey tool comprised demographic and health status items, primary healthcare access perceptions and the World Health Organization Quality of Life tool (WHOQOL-BREF). One-hundred-eighty-six MHV residents from regional NSW completed the survey. Hypertension (54.8%) and arthritis (46.5%) were the most prevalent chronic diseases reported. Overall, respondents expressed a high level of satisfaction with the sense of safety and security (82.8%), neighbours (69.4%) and the overall location of the villages (66.7%). There was good to excellent internal consistency of all four WHOQOL-BREF domain scores, with a comparatively lower sample mean score for the ‘Physical’ and ‘Psychological’ domains. MHV residents are a significant cohort of older people with high rates of chronic disease and reasonably poor access to transport services, which affects their capacity to access health services. They also have comparatively low levels of quality of physical and psychological life along with low levels of satisfaction with their health.
Additional keywords: housing, mobile home parks, quality of life, residential park, residents.
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