Abstract
BackgroundMaintaining mobility in old age is crucial for healthy ageing including delaying the onset and progress of frailty. However, the extent of an individuals´ mobility relies largely on their personal, social, and environmental resources as outlined in the Life-Space Constriction Model. Recent studies mainly focus on facilitating habitual out-of-home mobility by fostering one type of resources only. The MOBILE trial aims at testing whether tablet-assisted motivational counselling enhances the mobility of community-dwelling older adults by addressing personal, social, and environmental resources.MethodsIn the MOBILE randomized controlled trial, we plan to enrol 254 community-dwelling older adults aged 75 and older from Havelland, a rural area in Germany. The intervention group will receive a tablet-assisted motivational counselling at the participant´s home and two follow-up telephone sessions. Main focus of the counselling sessions lays on setting and adapting individual mobility goals and applying action planning and habit formation strategies by incorporating the personal social network and regional opportunities for engaging in mobility related activities. The control group will receive postal general health information. The primary mobility outcome is time out-of-home assessed by GPS (GPS.Rec2.0-App) at three points in time (baseline, after one month, and after three months for seven consecutive days each). Secondary outcomes are the size of the GPS-derived life-space convex hull, self-reported life-space mobility (LSA-D), physical activity (IPAQ), depressive symptoms (GDS), frailty phenotype, and health status (SF-12).DiscussionThe MOBILE trial will test the effect of a motivational counselling intervention on out-of-home mobility in community-dwelling older adults. Novel aspects of the MOBILE trial include the preventive multi-level intervention approach in combination with easy-to-use technology. The ecological approach ensures low-threshold implementation, which increases the benefit for the people in the region.Trial registrationThe MOBILE trial is prospectively registered at DRKS (Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien, German Registry of Clinical Trials) DRKS00025230. Registered 5 May 2021.
Highlights
Maintaining mobility in old age is crucial for healthy ageing including delaying the onset and progress of frailty
The proposed MOBILE trial will advance the knowledge on the effects of a motivational counselling for fostering out-of-home mobility in community-dwelling older adults in rural areas
We will achieve a deeper understanding of underlying individual, social and environmental resources for out-of-home mobility and their interconnection in this population
Summary
Maintaining mobility in old age is crucial for healthy ageing including delaying the onset and progress of frailty. The extent of an individualsmobility relies largely on their personal, social, and environmental resources as outlined in the Life-Space Constriction Model. The MOBILE trial aims at testing whether tablet-assisted motivational counselling enhances the mobility of community-dwelling older adults by addressing personal, social, and environmental resources. Healthy ageing is challenged as people get older is the growing prevalence of Haeger et al BMC Geriatrics (2022) 22:65 the frailty syndrome that varies from 4 to 59% depending on the used conceptualisation, assessments, and defined age group [2]. One way of preventing or delaying frailty is the facilitation of out-of-home mobility [5], as it is a prerequisite for participation in physical activities, social in-person involvement, and access to health care [6, 7]. Out-of-home mobility can be can be defined as movement through outdoor living environments called life-spaces expanding from ones home to the neighbourhood, city lived in, and beyond [7, 8]
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