RESEARCH ARTICLE Housing conditions and long-term care needs of older adults in Ghana: Evidence from the WHO SAGE Ghana Wave 1 Kofi Awuviry-Newton ID 1,2 *, Kwamina Abekah-Carter 1,3 , Kwadwo Ofori-Dua 1,4 , Razak M. Gyasi 5 , Cindy Nhyira Newton 1,6 , Williams Agyemang-Duah 1 , Paul Kowal 7 , Pablo Villalobos Dintrans ID 1,8 1 African Health and Ageing Research Centre, Winneba, Ghana, 2 College of Health and Biomedical Science, Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 Department of Social Work, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana, 4 Department of Sociology and Social Work, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, 5 Aging and Development Unit, African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi, Kenya, 6 Department of Public Health, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, 7 International Health Transitions, Canberra, Australia, 8 Facultad de Ciencias Me ´ dicas, Programa Centro Salud Pu ´ blica, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago, Chile * newscous@gmail.com Abstract The present study examined the association between housing conditions and long-term care needs of older adults in Ghana. We used data from 4,920 adults aged �50 years that participated in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Study on adult health and AGEing Ghana Wave 1. Housing conditions were assessed with drinking water, sanitation, cooking conditions and building materials, and long-term care needs were based on WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0. Multivariable logistic regressions modelled the effect of housing conditions on long-term care needs. After full adjustment for all available potential confound- ers, older adults living in households with unimproved cooking conditions had higher odds of reporting long-term care needs (OR = 6.87, 95%CI: 5.04–9.37) compared to those in improved cooking condition households. Moreover, those in households with unimproved housing materials (OR = 1.27, 95%CI: 1.01–1.72) and those in unimproved sanitation households (OR = 1.26, 95%CI: 1.05–1.54) were more likely to experience long-term care needs after respectively controlling for demographic and health-related covariates. Poor housing conditions are risk factors of long-term care needs in Ghana. Efforts to improve housing conditions may benefit older age functional abilities and unmet long-term care needs. Introduction Robust geriatric assessment of the care needs of older adults requires an understanding of a person’s physical and mental health status and their context, including the housing conditions. The United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030) aims to prolong older adults’ life expectancy with good health by addressing four areas of action [1]. The first three action areas PLOS GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH PLOS Global Public Health | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000863 December 7, 2022 1 / 13 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Awuviry-Newton K, Abekah-Carter K, Ofori-Dua K, Gyasi RM, Newton CN, Agyemang- Duah W, et al. (2022) Housing conditions and long-term care needs of older adults in Ghana: Evidence from the WHO SAGE Ghana Wave 1. PLOS Glob Public Health 2(12): e0000863. https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000863 Editor: Carmen Garcı ´a Peña, Instituto Nacional de Geriatria, MEXICO Received: October 19, 2021 Accepted: November 8, 2022 Published: December 7, 2022 Copyright: © 2022 Awuviry-Newton et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All data are contained in the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.