Health Benefits of Family Visits for Older Korean Women Living Alone

Objective: This study examined the relationship between family visitation and health outcomes among older women in South Korea before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many interactions, but the impact of sudden, large-scale social restrictions on health remains underexplored. Methods: Using data from the 2017 and 2020 National Survey of Older Adults (n = 634 each year; ages 65–90), descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression examined associations between family visitation and health outcomes. Results: During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), women in the highest visitation group had 2.36 times higher odds of being in the lower chronic disease group (odds ratio = 2.36; confidence interval [1.21, 4.59]; p <.05). Before COVID-19 (2017), the highest visitation group had lower odds of being in the low chronic disease group (odds ratio = 0.48; confidence interval [1.21, 4.59]; p <.05), indicating opposite patterns across the two periods. Conclusion: The findings indicate that the association between frequent family visitation and the health of older women varied across different time periods. Implications: Future studies can conduct research identifying the factors affecting these results and would benefit from a study design with a larger sample size.