Promoting Healthy Living for Seniors: Evaluation of a Community-Based Program

Authors

  • Jennifer Fogarty St. Joseph's Health Care - Parkwood Hospital Western University
  • Beverly Farrell Beverly Farrell is a therapeutic recreation specialist in Specialized Geriatric Services, St. Joseph's Health Care, London and a registered member of Therapeutic Recreation Ontario.
  • Iris Gutmanis Dr. Iris Gutmanis is the Director, Research and Evaluation, Specialized Geriatric Service, St. Joseph's Health Care, London.

Keywords:

Healthy aging, memory strategies, leisure education

Abstract

 A healthy lifestyle that addresses modifiable risk factors is beneficial for promoting brain health in older adults. Grey Matters,  a community-based therapeutic recreation specialist (TRS) led group intervention, focuses on promoting healthy aging and use of practical memory strategies. Grey Matters  participants (adults aged 55 years or more) completed questionnaires pre- and post-program about healthy aging, use of memory strategies and their memory abilities. Participants’ behavioral change was surveyed immediately post-program and six to eight months later. Participants significantly increased both their knowledge about lifestyle factors and use of memory strategies. Short- and long-term behavioral change occurred in the small subset of participants surveyed. This community-based TRS led program helped older adults utilize memory strategies, increase their knowledge of proactive lifestyle factors that they could use to reduce the risk of future memory loss and motivate behavior change. This is an emerging role for therapeutic recreation.

Author Biographies

Jennifer Fogarty, St. Joseph's Health Care - Parkwood Hospital Western University

Dr. Jennifer Fogarty is a clinical neuropsychologist in Specialized Geriatric Services, St. Joseph's Health Care-London. She is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Division of Geriatric Medicine. Her research interests include the development and evaluation of cognitive rehabilitative interventions for older adults, lifestyle interventions that reduce risk of cognitive decline, prediction of driving safety in the elderly, and psychometric issues in assessing cognitive function in older adults.

Beverly Farrell, Beverly Farrell is a therapeutic recreation specialist in Specialized Geriatric Services, St. Joseph's Health Care, London and a registered member of Therapeutic Recreation Ontario.

She is a part-time teacher at Fanshawe College in the Recreation and Leisure Services program as well as a family support worker for the Huntington's Society of Canada.  Bev is the Chair of the Age Friendly London Social Participation Network and the Seniors Community Association Recreation and Leisure committee.

Iris Gutmanis, Dr. Iris Gutmanis is the Director, Research and Evaluation, Specialized Geriatric Service, St. Joseph's Health Care, London.

An epidemiologist working the in area of geriatrics, her current areas of research include developing measures of health for older populations, community capacity building and knowledge exchange/implementation science. Dr. Gutmanis is also interested in population health surveillance and program evaluation.

Downloads

Additional Files

Published

2014-07-14

Issue

Vol. 48 No. 3 (2014)

Section

Practice Perspective

License

Sagamore Publishing LLC (hereinafter the “Copyright Owner”)

Journal Publishing Copyright Agreement for Authors

PLEASE REVIEW OUR POLICIES AND THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT, AND INDICATE YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS BY CHECKING THE ‘AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS COPYRIGHT NOTICE’ CHECKBOX BELOW.

I understand that by submitting an article to Therapeutic Recreation Journal, I am granting the copyright to the article submitted for consideration for publication in Therapeutic Recreation Journal to the Copyright Owner. If after consideration of the Editor of the Therapeutic Recreation Journal, the article is not accepted for publication, all copyright covered under this agreement will be automatically returned to the Author(s).

THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT

Assignment of Copyright

I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript I am submitting in this online procedure and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript in all forms and media (whether now known or later developed), throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when the article is accepted for publication.

Reversion of Rights

Articles may sometimes be accepted for publication but later be rejected in the publication process, even in some cases after public posting in “Articles in Press” form, in which case all rights will revert to the Author.

Retention of Rights for Scholarly Purposes

I understand that I retain or am hereby granted the Retained Rights. The Retained Rights include the right to use the Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.

All journal material is under a 12 month embargo. Authors who would like to have their articles available as open access should contact Sagamore-Venture for further information.

In the case of the Accepted Manuscript and the Published Journal Article, the Retained Rights exclude Commercial Use, other than use by the author in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works or to extend the Article to book length form or re-use by the author of portions or excerpts in other works.

Published Journal Article: the author may share a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI.

Author Representations

  • The Article I have submitted to the journal for review is original, has been written by the stated author(s) and has not been published elsewhere.
  • The Article was not submitted for review to another journal while under review by this journal and will not be submitted to any other journal.
  • The Article contains no libelous or other unlawful statements and does not contain any materials that violate any personal or proprietary rights of any other person or entity.
  • I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in the Article.
  • If the Article was prepared jointly with other authors, I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this Journal Publishing Agreement and that I am signing on their behalf as their agent, and I am authorized to do so.