Background: Age-friendly cities and communities aim to enhance and preserve the functional abilities of older adults. This systematic review assesses the impact of interventions in transportation, housing, and urban development on the mobility of older adults.
Methods: We systematically searched MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, Scopus, PsycINFO, and SocINDEX up to July 2022 to identify studies that evaluated the impact of transportation, housing, and urban development interventions on older adults' mobility.
Introduction: Health inequalities in the UK are investigated and addressed by analysing data across socioeconomic factors, geography and specific characteristics, including those protected under law. It is acknowledged that the quality of data underpinning these analyses can be improved. The objective of this work was to gain insights from professionals working across the health and care sector in England into the type(s) of resource(s) that can be instrumental in implementing mechanisms to improve data quality into practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Exercise promotion interventions for people with Parkinson's disease (PD) are often offered on a face-to-face basis, follow a generic "one-size-fit-all" approach, and are not typically delivered at diagnosis. Considering PD's heterogenous nature, the existing evidence on the merits of exercise on symptom management and the expressed wishes of people living with PD for access to timely and tailored evidence-based information, there is a demand for interventions that are easily accessible, scalable and co-designed with people living with PD.
Objective: Evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a co-designed digital intervention promoting exercise and physical activity, in people newly diagnosed with PD.
Background: Increased understanding of dementia risk-reduction and early detection of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders has spurred interest in the identification of risks for dementia, underlying putative biologies, or dementia itself. Implementation of such approaches require acceptability to the public. Research prior to 2012 indicated limited acceptability for population dementia screening.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Risk prediction models aim to identify those at high risk to receive targeted interventions. We aimed to identify the proportion of future dementia cases that would be missed by a high-risk screening program.
Methods: We identified validated dementia risk prediction models from systematic reviews.
Background: People with Parkinson's (PwP) want access to timely, relevant, and specific exercise and physical activity (PA) information to enable them to manage their symptoms and maintain wellbeing and quality of life. Research that promotes exercise in this population group is limited. Little is also known about the clinical practice around PA promotion in this population, especially around the time of diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Dementia risk reduction is a global public health priority. Existing primary prevention approaches have favored individual-level interventions, with a research and policy gap for population-level interventions. We conducted a complex, multi-stage, evidence review to identify empirical evidence on population-level interventions for each of the modifiable risk factors identified by the Lancet Commission on dementia (2020).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: To investigate the associations between weight change patterns and 5-year incident non-diabetic hyperglycaemia (NDH), and glycated haemoglobin (HbA) levels among individuals who had overweight or obesity.
Methods: This longitudinal cohort study (N = 435) pooled data from a weight management trial. Participants were adults with a body mass index of ≥28 kg/m.
Objectives: Exercise and physical activity (PA) are increasingly recognized as important components in the management of Parkinson's disease (PD). Their promotion at diagnosis is essential for better management of symptoms and overall well-being. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are pivotal to the promotion of exercise and PA, but there is limited guidance on the content of such interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Dementia is a leading, global public health challenge. Recent evidence supporting a decrease in age-specific incidence of dementia in high-income countries (HICs) suggests that risk reduction is possible through improved life-course public health. Despite this, efforts to date have been heavily focused on individual-level approaches, which are unlikely to significantly reduce dementia prevalence or inequalities in dementia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030) seeks to create multisectoral changes that align healthy ageing with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Given that the SDGs have completed their first five years, the objective of this scoping review was to summarise any efforts launched to directly address the SDGs in older adults in community settings prior to the Decade. This will contribute to providing a baseline against which to track progress and identify gaps.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
November 2022
Identifying and monitoring of health inequalities requires good-quality data. The aim of this work is to systematically review the evidence base on approaches taken within the healthcare context to improve the quality of data for the identification and monitoring of health inequalities and describe the evidence base on the effectiveness of such approaches or recommendations. Peer-reviewed scientific journal publications, as well as grey literature, were included in this review if they described approaches and/or made recommendations to improve data quality relating to the identification and monitoring of health inequalities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In the context of a growing number of dementia friendly communities (DFCs) globally, a need remains for robust evaluation, and for tools to capture relevant evidence. This paper reports the development of a suite of evaluation resources for DFCs through a national study in England.
Methods: Fieldwork took place in six diverse case study sites across England.
Background: Numerous determinants have been linked to public mental health; however, they have not been brought together in a comprehensive conceptual framework. The goal of this work was to bring together academic research, practitioner expertise, and public perspectives to create a public mental health conceptual framework.
Methods: The development process proceeded in four stages.
Background: Educational interventions promoting the role of physical activity (PA) aim to address knowledge, poor exercise self-efficacy, and low outcome expectations, which are well-researched barriers to PA participation in healthy and in people with chronic conditions. However, little is known about the effectiveness of educational interventions in addressing these barriers in people with Parkinson's (PwP).
Objective: To examine the content of education interventions that promote PA behavior in PwP, and to assess their effectiveness on physical and psychosocial outcomes.
Background: Dementia Friendly Communities (DFCs) offer an approach to community engagement to improve the lives of people living with dementia and their family supporters. The involvement of those living with dementia is key to creating successful DFCs. This paper examines how people affected by dementia were involved in developing and designing DFCs in England, and the impact of their involvement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mental health concerns in older adults are common, with increasing age-related risks to physical health, mobility and social isolation. Community-based approaches are a key focus of public health strategy in the UK, and may reduce the impact of these risks, protecting mental health and promoting wellbeing. We conducted a review of UK community-based interventions to understand the types of intervention studied and mental health/wellbeing impacts reported.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has created a period of global economic uncertainty. Financial strain, personal debt, recent job loss and housing insecurity are important risk factors for the mental health of working-age adults. Community interventions have the potential to attenuate the mental health impact of these stressors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAgeing is a global concern with major social, health, and economic implications. While individual countries seek to develop responses to immediate, pressing needs, international attention and collaboration is required to most effectively address the multifaceted challenges and opportunities an ageing global population presents in the longer term. The Ageing, Longevity and Health stream of the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU-ALH) was built on a solid foundation of first-class interdisciplinary research and on innovative outreach and communication centres.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDementia-friendly communities (DFCs) are one way in which people living with dementia can be supported to be active, engaged and valued citizens. Quantitative evaluations of the experiences of those with dementia living within these communities are scarce. This article reports findings from a survey of people living with dementia on their experience of living in a DFC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Economic evaluations of lifestyle interventions, which aim to prevent diabetes/cardiovascular disease (CVD), have not included dementia. Lifestyle interventions decrease dementia risk and extend life expectancy, leading to competing effects on health care costs. We aim to demonstrate the feasibility of including dementia in a public health cost-effectiveness analysis and quantify the overall impacts accounting for these competing effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Engaging the community in decisions-making is recognised as important for improving public health, and is recommended in global alcohol strategies, and in national policies on controlling alcohol availability. Yet there is little understanding of how to engage communities to influence decision-making to help reduce alcohol-related harms. We sought to identify and understand mechanisms of community engagement in decision-making concerning the local alcohol environment in England.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: With the emergence of healthy aging as a key societal issue in recent decades, technology has often been proposed as a solution to the challenges faced by aging societies. From a public health perspective, however, aging-related technologies have been inconsistently conceptualized and ill-defined. By examining how relevant concepts in "technology for aging" have been developed to date, we hope to identify gaps and begin clarifying the topic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Public mental health (PMH) is a global challenge and a UK priority area for action. However, to progress, practitioners require a stronger evidence base regarding the effectiveness of approaches, particularly regarding promotion and prevention through community-centred interventions. In addition, policy-makers need to understand what is being delivered, particularly in areas of high need, to identify promising practices or gaps in PMH provision.
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