ADVANCING HEALTH AND WELL-BEING INTO OLD AGEHealth Promotion and well-being throughout life
Improved knowledge and understanding of the factors contributing to maintenance and enhancement of health status over the life course is required. Interaction and the dynamics of elements contributing to achievement of healthy ageing needs intensive research. Research in these arenas should be multidisciplinary, cross-national, cross-cultural and longitudinal. Training in age related areas should include appreciation for the importance of maintenance and promotion of health with ageing and the means to achieve healthy ageing. Practitioners and policy makers in diverse fields can contribute to health promotion and preventive strategies with ageing.
Research- Assessments of well-being and quality of life must place older persons at the center.
- International harmonization of well-being measures will enable researchers to predict ad influence outcomes.
- Improved knowledge and understanding of behavioral and psychological determinants of health such as self-efficacy and adaptive coping styles is required.
- While recent research acknowledges the multidimensionality of quality of life in older people, to date few published studies have used comprehensive, multi-dimensional measures of quality of life to examine cross-cultural differences in healthy versus unhealthy ageing.
- Further research is needed to examine common features that generalize across cultures that can be used to improve quality of life in older adults and to build a foundation for policy and decision making.
- Public health experts ought to assess the impact of services and of various health and social care structures on the quality of life of older adults. Measures are needed that examine and identify areas that potentially produce large health and quality of life gains in older people.
- Education about behavioral and psychological determinants of health is needed by consumers and practitioners
- Education should be promoted as an important determinant of health and an active life expectancy.
- Professional training and public education should emphasize effective means to promote and maintain good health and functional abilities at all ages.
- Policies need to be based upon the identification of personal, social and cultural factors that contribute to healthy ageing. Quality of life measures provide one instrument to evaluate whether policies meet these goals.
- In most European countries, health and social services are compartmentalized and reactive in nature. This process has set up barriers that are counterproductive to person-centered approaches with potentially negative health effects and services that may be ineffective or inappropriate.
- Demonstrations shall reveal how intersectoral cooperation at local and other policy levels can lead to improved health for older people. Projects should connect policy levels and be based on an outreach, person-centered and asset model. This approach will address ethical ways of resource allocation.
- Disability is not inevitable in old age and its onset can often be delayed or prevented. Disability is not only defined by the characteristics of the older person with functional limitations but also by the characteristics of the home and community environment in which that person lives. For example, properly modified housing and ageing friendly communities facilitate on older person’s ability for self-care despite significant physical limitations. An integrated health and welfare service approach is to identify malleable aspects of the physical and social environment that will optimize the functional capacity of older persons within the community.