Improving physical activity levels of older people living in care homes Phase I

Aim(s):

Physical activity (PA) is beneficial to older people’s health, function and quality of life. There is evidence that older people in care homes do not engage in PA. This is problematic since this group are most at risk of functional and health decline.

 This proposal aims to:

1. Explore from the perspective of residents and care home staff the barriers and facilitators to care home residents’ levels of PA
2. Examine how care home systems, practices and processes influence residents’ physical activity.
3. Identify feasible opportunities for care home residents to engage in PA.
4. Develop feasible intervention(s) for care home staff and residents to increase PA levels.
5. This will be a multi-phase study, undertaken in four work packages (WP).

 WP1: Systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of PA interventions and meta-synthesis of the qualitative literature relating to attitudes and beliefs, barriers and facilitators to PA in care homes. 

WP2: Exploration of attitudes and beliefs to physical activity amongst carers and residents and ethnographic analysis of daily life in a variety of care homes. 

WP3: Development of potential interventions. WP1 and WP2 will inform selection of candidate theories and development of components of potential interventions to increase levels of care home PA. 

WP4: These potential interventions will be fed back to users in focus groups in the form of vignettes.  This will allow the intervention to be refined to one that is feasible to implement.

At the end, we will have produced an intervention package ready for feasibility testing.

Principal Investigator: NHS Tayside

NMAHP Research Unit Collaborators: Dr Jacqui Morris

External Collaborators: Kroll T - University of Dundee, Witham M - University of Dundee.

Funder:  Chief Scientist Office