Obesity and receipt of personal care assistance for people with mobility impairments

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which level of obesity was associated with hours of personal care among people with mobility impairments.

The analytic sample consisted of 9496 respondents to the Adult Disability Follow-Back Survey (NHIS-D Phase II) who had mobility difficulty and difficulty with at least one activity of daily living or instrumental activity of daily living. Logistic regression analyses determined the relationship between level of obesity and receipt of any paid or unpaid help, controlling for potential confounders. In addition, differences in hours of help by level of obesity were evaluated using multiple regression.

In the crude analysis, obese respondents were significantly less likely to receive any paid help than normal weight respondents (average odds ratio 0.75) and received significantly fewer hours of both paid and unpaid help. The difference in prevalence of receipt of any unpaid and any paid help by level of obesity was explained by adjustment for age and other demographic characteristics. Adjusted hours of paid and unpaid help were equivalent for those with and without obesity.

Obese people with mobility impairments received less help with personal care than those of normal weight, although these findings are explained by demographics. Nevertheless, these findings raise public health concerns given the growing obesity epidemic in the United States and lack of available resources to support younger persons with disabilities.