Abstract
BackgroundThe ageing of modern societies remains one of the greatest challenges for health and social systems. To respond to this challenge, we need effective strategies assuring healthy active life for elderly people. Health promotion and related activities are perceived as a key intervention, which can improve wellbeing in later life. The main aim of this study is the identification and classification of such interventions addressed to older adults and elderly. Therefore, the strategy based on the scoping review as a feasible tool for exploring this domain, summarizing research findings and identifying gaps of evidence, was applied.MethodsThe scoping review relies on the analysis of previous reviews of interventions aimed at older adults (55–64 years old) and elderly persons (65 years and above) assessed for their effectiveness in the framework of a systematic review and/or meta-analysis. The search strategy was based on the identification of interventions reported as health promotion, primary disease prevention, screening or social support. In the analysis, the reviews published from January 2000 to April 2015 were included.ResultsThe search strategy yielded 334 systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses addressed to target groups of interest, 182 of them assessed interventions belonging to health promotion, 219 to primary prevention, 34 to screening and 35 to social support. The studies focused on elderly (65 years and above) made up 40.4 % of all retrieved reviews and those addressing population of 55 years and above accounted for 24.0 %.ConclusionsInterventions focused on health maintenance and improvement in elderly and older adults represent frequently combined health promotion and disease prevention actions. Many interventions of this type are not addressed exclusively to elderly populations and/or older adults but are designed for the general population. The most common types of interventions addressed to elderly and older adults in the area of health promotion include health education, behavior modification and health communication.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1521-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The ageing of modern societies remains one of the greatest challenges for health and social systems
General area of intervention From 334 retrieved systematic reviews, 182 were related to interventions classified as belonging to health promotion, 219 to primary disease prevention, to screening, and to social support
Studies related to the analysis of the effectiveness of interventions combining health promotion and primary disease prevention actions were the second most numerous category (n = 79, 23.7 %), with those focused on health promotion interventions coming in third (n = 75, 22.5 %)
Summary
The ageing of modern societies remains one of the greatest challenges for health and social systems. To respond to this challenge, we need effective strategies assuring healthy active life for elderly people. Population ageing is perceived as one of the greatest challenges for modern societies both in terms of economic burden and social demands. As a response to this challenge, many policies and strategies on international, national or other levels have been formulated. They are aimed at reaching goals related to affirmative concepts of ageing formulated as ‘active ageing’ [3], ‘healthy ageing’ [4], ‘productive ageing’ [5] or ‘positive ageing’ [6, 7]. According to the Policy Framework issued by the World Health Organization in 2002, the development of
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