Abstract
Older public housing tenants experience various factors associated with physical inactivity and are locally dependent on their environment to support their physical activity. A better understanding of the person-environment fit for physical activity could highlight avenues to improve access to physical activity for this subgroup of the population. The aim of this study was to evaluate older public housing tenants’ capabilities for physical activity in their residential environment using a socioecological approach. We conducted individual semi-structured walk-along interviews with 26 tenants (female = 18, male = 8, mean age = 71.96 years old). Living in housing developments exclusively for adults aged 60 years or over in three neighborhoods in the city of Montreal, Canada. A hybrid thematic analysis produced five capabilities for physical activity: Political, financial, social, physical, and psychological. Themes spanned across ecological levels including individual, public housing, community, and government. Tenant committees appear important to physical activity promotion. Participants called for psychosocial interventions to boost their capability for physical activity as well as greater implication from the housing authority and from government. Results further support a call for intersectoral action to improve access to physical activity for less affluent subgroups of the population such as older public housing tenants.
Highlights
Physical activity promotion among older adults is a high priority for public health authorities, since it is known to be salubrious at later stages of life [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] and as older adults are the least active age group worldwide [8,9] physical activity is known to be unequally accessible across different groups of the population
We describe five capabilities for physical activity: Political, financial, social, physical, and psychological
The results of our study suggest that psychosocial services are needed and are central to physical activity promotion for this subgroup of the population
Summary
Physical activity promotion among older adults is a high priority for public health authorities, since it is known to be salubrious at later stages of life [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] and as older adults are the least active age group worldwide [8,9] physical activity is known to be unequally accessible across different groups of the population. Older public housing tenants experience significant inequalities in health. They represent a subgroup of the population with multiple socioeconomic characteristics associated with physical inactivity, which include being of older age, representing a minority cultural background, having lower income and education, presenting higher morbidity, being a woman, and living in a single-person household [8,11,13,14,15,16,17,18]. Older adults living in public housing face greater vulnerability to poor health. Even when compared to adults with equal age and income living on the private market, older public housing tenants show greater indices of physical and mental illness [15,17,19,20,21].
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