RCT of Health-promoting Intervention for Older Foreign-born Adults

Livslots Angered - A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Community-based Health-promoting and Disease-preventive Program for Older Foreign Born Adults

The overarching aim with this study was to develop, implement and evaluate a health promoting programme for people from Finland or the Western Balkan region, who were 70 years of age or older and independent daily activites (1). The aim of the programme was to prevent or delay dependence in daily activities, health decline, and frailty. The study focused on both evaluation and implementation and the data collection finished in 2016

The study has developed tools for collaboration between the target group, staff and researchers, as well as with tools to bridge barriers to health promotion. For example, alternative ways to recruit participants and to collect and analyse data in studies with and for people who are ageing in a migration context.

The findings describe how a person-centred approach could be used to make use of the resources of the target groups, and visualise methods to bridge linguistic barriers. The education material from Older people in the risk zone has also been translated to Bosnian Serbo-Croatian and Finnish.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Foreign-born from Finland or any of five countries in the Western Balkans (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia)
• 70 years of age or older
• Living in Angered, Gothenburg
• Living in their ordinary housing
• Not dependent on informal or formal help in daily activities

Exclusion Criteria:

• Impaired cognition, Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) below 80% of administered items