Prevalence of long-term disability in Portugal, 2014: Evidence of variation by personal and contextual factors

Background: Disability is not just a health problem. It is a wider phenomenon that reflects the gap between a person's capacities and their ability to fully perform the role demanded by society. Both personal and environmental factors are major contributors to disability. Objective: We aimed to estimate the prevalence of self-reported disability, overall and by sex, and associated factors in the Portuguese population in 2014. Methods: This was a cross sectional study based on data from the Portuguese National Health Interview Survey (2014) (n = 18,204). Long-term disability was evaluated based on the respondent reporting reasons for current disability lasting more than 6 months. Sex, age group, region, marital status, self-rated health, having or not health insurance, educational level, income, tobacco and alcohol consumption, physical activity and body mass index were considered as independent variables. A poisson model was performed to identify factors associated with disability. Results: Approximately 40% of the respondents reported having some long-term disability. Disability prevalence was higher in women than men (44.4% and 34.2%, respectively). Results showed age, region, education, self-rated health, physical activity and body mass index were associated with disability (p < 0.05). Conclusions: This study shows that along with personal factors, the context plays an important role in disability. We believe this piece of evidence emphasizes the factor context namely the region, when decision makers design disability related policies. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.