Health Activity

Municipal and county council prevention must be developed and efforts should be directed towards promoting health, safety and security. The goal is to enable older people to take personal responsibility for their health and living through an active life and participation in society. Research on older people's responsibility for their health shows that capabilities vary and that social support structures to individually adapt and promote health work are needed. We have over the past year been working to develop a health promotion program for older people in Gislaved inspired by the American method Lifestyle Redesign ® (LR) with documented health benefits. A similar program has been developed in the UK, which has resulted in recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. In Sweden, the program has been applied in a medical centre in Jönköping and evaluated with good results. The next step is developing, and we are now testing the intended program in a larger study to find out if it can be applied and spread to several municipalities and counties. The current work is a collaboration between researchers and clinicians in Jönköping, Kalmar and Växjö. Our target this time is women over 65 with low socioeconomic status, as these persons are known to have a higher risk of illness than others in the same age groups. Eventually we hope to arrive at a permanent implementation of the program.

Finansierat av FORSS, Dnr: 42358