Evaluating the Impact of the McMaster Optimal Aging Portal on Physical Mobility Outcomes

McMaster University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Mobility Limitation

Treatments: Other: Tailored Knowledge Translation

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02947230

2017-04

Details and patient eligibility

About

The McMaster Optimal Aging Portal (the Portal) was launched in 2014 to increase public access to trustworthy health information. The Portal helps readers to access evidence-based resources; identify trustworthy messages; and understand scientific findings. Now the investigators want to know whether using the Portal changes what people know and do to stay healthy and mobile.

This project will help us to:

1. Understand how middle aged and older adults (age 40+) use the Portal to obtain information about maintaining and improving mobility
2. Evaluate whether use of the Portal results in a change in knowledge about maintaining and improving mobility, or change in lifestyle behaviours that may help maintain or improve mobility with age.

Full description

Physically active lifestyles are important for health aging, but most Canadians do not meet published physical activity guidelines. This may be in part due to lack of access to evidence-based information on mobility and aging, and knowledge of strategies to maintain or improve mobility with age. The McMaster Optimal Aging Portal (the Portal) was launched in 2014 to increase public access to trustworthy health information. Now the investigators want to know if easy-to-understand evidence-based messages change what people know and do to stay healthy and mobile.

Sequential, explanatory mixed-methods design consisting of a two-armed randomized controlled trial and a qualitative process study to explore quantitative findings in depth.

Consent forms and a baseline survey will be sent to all interested participants. Following baseline data collection, participants will be stratified by previous Portal use, and randomized to the Knowledge Translation (KT) intervention or control group. During the 12-week KT intervention, intervention group participants will have access to the Portal and will receive mobility- focused weekly email alerts including blog posts and evidence summaries relevant to mobility and be invited to follow a Twitter and Facebook feed; a unique hashtag will be created to identify and collate relevant mobility information. Control group participants will be able to access the Portal in a 'self-serve' fashion, but will not receive targeted KT strategies.

Enrollment: 535 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 40+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• English-speaking

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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535 participants in 2 patient groups

Tailored Knowledge Translation

Experimental group

Description:

During the 12-week KT intervention, intervention group participants will have access to the Portal and will receive mobility-focused weekly email alerts including blog posts and evidence summaries relevant to mobility and be invited to follow a Twitter and Facebook feed; a unique hashtag will be created to identify and collate relevant mobility information.

Treatment:

Other: Tailored Knowledge Translation

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in the control group will have access to the Portal in a 'self-serve' fashion. These participants will be able to browse the Portal, subscribe to email alerts, follow social media, etc. but will not receive the tailored mobility intervention.