RCT of Health-promoting Intervention for Older Foreign-born Adults

Göteborg University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Behavior

Treatments: Behavioral: Senior meetings

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01841853

Livslots Angered

Details and patient eligibility

About

The overarching aim with this study was to develop, implement and evaluate a health promoting programme for people from Finland or the Western Balkan region, who were 70 years of age or older and independent daily activites (1). The aim of the programme was to prevent or delay dependence in daily activities, health decline, and frailty. The study focused on both evaluation and implementation and the data collection finished in 2016

Full description

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.

Enrollment: 131 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 70+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Foreign-born from Finland or any of five countries in the Western Balkans (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia)
• 70 years of age or older
• Living in Angered, Gothenburg
• Living in their ordinary housing
• Not dependent on informal or formal help in daily activities

Exclusion criteria

• Impaired cognition, Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) below 80% of administered items

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

---

131 participants in 2 patient groups

Senior meetings

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention will comprise four weekly meetings in small groups (4-6 participants) in addition to an individual follow-up home visit two to three weeks after the last senior meeting.The main purpose of the senior meetings is to give information and facilitate discussion of the ageing process and provide tools and suggest strategies to enable the clients to solve the various problems that may arise at home in order to remain living at home in a safe and secure way. The information will also include what the municipality provides in the form of local meeting places, activities run by local associations, physical training for seniors, walking groups, possibilities of offering or accepting help on a voluntary basis. Furthermore, they will be informed about help and support available in their city district. Identification of risks for, and advice on, how to prevent falls will also be included.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Senior meetings

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

The control group will receive conventional care on their own initiative.