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Health promotion for older persons: Elderly persons in the risk zone (ÄIR) and older persons born abroad (PAMC)

Research project

Inactive research

Project owner

Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology

Area

Health and

medicine

Topic

MEDICAL AND HEALTH

SCIENCES

Other Social

Sciences

Short description

Health promotion for older people consists of two completed projects; Health promotion for elderly persons at risk (ÄIR) and health promotion for older people born abroad (PAMC), both projects with the primary purpose of evaluating whether a health promotion intervention can prevent and delay deterioration in daily activities and frailty. The Health promotion for elderly person at risk (ÄIR) project was completed in 2012. The study has contributed to knowledge of how to work health promotive with those at risk of becoming frail. This knowledge has then been used to develop the health promotion project for older person from Finland, and the Western Balkans (PAMC). That project was completed in 2018. Five dissertations and about 30 articles have been published in total within the projects. Both projects will be further described below.

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Health promotion for older persons: Elderly persons in the risk zone (ÄIR)

The project “Elderly persons in the risk zone (ÄIR)” was a blind randomized controlled health promotion intervention study with three arms (senior meetings, preventive home visits and control group) in combination with qualitative methods for persons 80 years or older at risk of frailty (1). The studies showed that it is possible to postpone a decline in activities of daily living, morbidity and frailty that it is cost-effective (2), and that older people living alone are a risk group for which the intervention benefits most. (3). Therefore, they are the group that would benefit the most of the intervention and who should be invited to participate in health promotion programmes such as older people in the risk zone. The project has also developed tools such as the education material “Livslots för seniorer” (4), that aims to provide knowledge and methods to meet the challenge of growing old. Community and primary care staff have, together with the researchers, developed a manual (5) for how to work with senior meetings and preventive home visits in the health promoting programme. These tools can be downloaded and used in health promoting interventions with this target group.

Two dissertations and about 18 articles have been published within the project

Health promotion for older persons: Older persons born abroad (PAMC)

The project “Older persons born abroad (PAMC)” was a randomized controlled health promotion intervention study with two arms (senior meetings and control group) in combination with qualitative methods for persons from Finland or the Western Balkan region, who were 70 years of age or older and independent in daily activities (6).

The results show that the quantitative evaluation of the program did not have any scientifically proven effect on daily activities and health. The qualitative studies showed that the program benefited. People who participated in the program felt that it promoted health by they becoming more conscious. In everyday life, knowledge from the program was used as a support for health decisions. The study has developed tools for collaboration between the target group, staff and researchers, as well as with tools to bridge barriers to health promotion. For example, alternative ways to recruit participants and to collect and analyse data in studies with and for people who are ageing in a migration context. The findings describe how a person-centred approach could be used to make use of the resources of the target groups, and visualise methods to bridge linguistic barriers. The education material from "Older people in the risk zone" has also been translated to Bosnian Serbo-Croatian and Finnish (7).

Three dissertations and about thirteen articles have been published within the project.