Towards salutogenichealth promotion : organizing healthy ageing programs at the local level

Als gevolg van landelijke wetgeving, zoals de Wet Publieke Gezondheid (WPG) en de Wet Maatschappelijke Ondersteuning (WMO), hebben gemeenten meer verantwoordelijkheden gekregen ten aanzien van hun oudere populatie. Het onderzoek beschreven in het proefschrift ‘Towards salutogenic health promotion. Organizing healthy ageing programs at the local level’ moet bijdragen aan het opdoen van kennis over hoe lokale programma’s ten behoeve van gezond ouder worden te ontwikkelen, te implementeren en te evalueren. Drie punten bleken belangrijk bij het ontwikkelen, implementeren en evalueren van gezondheidsprogramma’s voor gezond ouder worden. De perceptie van ouderen zelf: De ideeën die ouderen zelf hebben ten aanzien van gezond ouder worden zijn belangrijk. Een salutogene benadering biedt handvaten om de perceptie van ouderen ten aanzien van nieuwe gezondheidsprogramma’s te onderzoeken. Samenwerken voor gezond ouder worden. Samenwerken draagt bij aan het opbouwen van kennis nodig om gezondheidsprogramma’s te ontwikkelen. Samenwerking is echter niet vanzelfsprekend. Daarom zou samenwerking een expliciet onderdeel moeten zijn van gezondheidsprogramma’s. Combineren van bewijs. Door samenwerking met verschillende partijen is het mogelijk om verschillende vormen van bewijs te combineren. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het programma ‘Voor Elkaar in de Buurt’

Older People, Sense of Coherence and Community

Population ageing is a global trend and even though years added to life often are lived in good health; it will have an impact on healthcare, housing and facilities, and social security costs. Healthy ageing in place, especially in one’s own home and community, increasingly receives attention from health professionals, researchers, and policymakers. In this chapter, we first discuss the meaning of the concept of healthy ageing, and how Sense of Coherence contributes to this process. Next, we discuss the characteristics of the community in which older people live their lives and how the community can provide resources (GRR and SRR) to strengthen Sense of Coherence and hence perceived well-being and quality of life

De ActiviteitenDialoog: plannen maken doe je samen!

In het project Gezond Ouder Worden in Apeldoorn hebben twee werkgroepen gewerkt met de ActiviteitenDialoog. Dit is een instrument om met elkaar in gesprek te gaan over activiteiten die lokaal kunnen worden uitgevoerd. De inzet van de ActiviteitenDialoog draagt niet alleen bij aan het ontwikkelen en uitvoeren van plannen en activiteiten maar ook aan het verduidelijken van taken en rollen in de samenwerking en daarmee aan de betrokkenheid van organisaties. In dit artikel worden de verschillende stappen van de ActiviteitenDialoog besproken en wordt een beschrijving gegeven van de resultaten en ervaringen van het werken met de ActiviteitenDialoog

Neighbors Connected: the interactive use of multi-method and interdisciplinary evidence in the development and implementation of neighbors connected

Neighbors Connected is a community-based intervention in the Netherlands. It helps the active older people to organize social activities for their less active older neighbors, facilitated by practical and financial support from the Community Health Service. The intervention is the outcome of a combination of semi-structured interviews with the older people, with organizations for older people and with local policy-makers, epidemiological data and interactive discussions, all of which support the notion that engaging in social activities is a way to enhance healthy ageing within the community. The use of different sources of evidence resulted in a comprehensive picture and actionable local knowledg

Coordinated action checklist: a tool for partnerships to facilitate and evaluate community health promotion

Coordinated action through partnerships is a core approach in community health promotion to deal with the multidimensionality of today’s health and societal issues. The number of partnerships is increasing. However, facilitation and evaluation of partnerships is hampered by the lack and/or non-use of feasible tools. As a consequence, health promotion through partnerships is not optimally facilitated and evaluated. This article describes the development and piloting of a tool and guidelines to facilitate and evaluate coordinated action in community health promotion. The initial development of the tool was based on relevant literature, a conceptual framework to support social environments for health, and an inventory of existing tools. Appreciative inquiry principles contributed to the formulation of items. The result, a checklist for coordinated action, was further developed and assessed for usability in six different partnerships: a national program, an academic collaborative and four local partnerships. Results of the checklist were cross-checked and discussed with partners. Piloting the checklist resulted in a feasible tool helpful to partnerships because of its ability to generate actionable knowledge. The checklist enables the facilitation and evaluation of community health promotion partnerships that differ in context and level (both local and national), phase of the program and topics addressed. Cross-checking and discussing results with partners and triangulation with interview data increases the reliability of the results of the checklist. Piloting in multiple cases contributes to the checklist’s external validity

Neighbors Connected; Exploring Recruitment of Dutch Older People for Activities

The recruitment of older people to engage in actions aimed at promoting health is an issue that does not receive much attention within health promotion practice. Many activities for older people are organized; however, less socially active older people do not participate in such activities. The aim of this study is to examine how to successfully recruit less socially active older people to participate in social activities. By means of a short questionnaire completed by 254 participants, and interviews with 12 participants and 9 organizers, we identified four elements that facilitate recruitment of less socially active older people to participate in social activities of the programme Neighbours Connected. These elements are: (i) personal contact with organizers, (ii) social support, (iii) close proximity and easy accessibility, and (iv) an opportunity offered by the activity itself for social interaction and for learning new things. These elements contribute to perceiving activities as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful. We conclude that the elements that improve recruitment for activities mainly relate to the context in which the activity is organized, rather than to the content of the activity. For future programmes this means that in recruitment, focus should be as much on the context in which an activity takes place as on the content of the activity