Community health promotion programs for seniors : program focus and contributing factors to composition

• Main Author: Calsaferri, Kim
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2010
• Subjects: Health promotion; Community health services for older people; Health Promotion > Aged; Health Services for the Aged
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28936

The purpose of this study is to investigate the program focus and contributing factors to program composition of five health promotion programs for seniors. The programs are selected using opportunistic sampling from five different local areas in metropolitan Vancouver. The five areas together constitute metropolitan Vancouver. A theoretical framework based on health promotion as a process which enables people to take control of their health promotion programming and recognizes that social, political, and organizational interventions are as important as individual actions, is used to support the purpose of this study. An ethnographic approach is used to collect observational, interview and documentary data on program focus, process and organization. The data are analyzed qualitatively to further the understanding of health promotion as a process central to individual and group empowerment in program focus and organization. The findings confirm that these programs focus predominantly on individual behaviour change efforts and only minimally on underlying environmental and community change factors. In the process of examining these health promotion programs for seniors, themes emerged which shed light on which factors most influence program composition. Program organization and process which involves multiple historical, theoretical and organizational factors are seen to most heavily influence program composition. === Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies === Graduate