Co-designing community-level integral interventions for active ageing: a systematic review from the lens of community-based participatory research.

BACKGROUND: While community-level interventions for promoting active ageing have received increasing attention and there is a trend to leverage technology to support traditional physical or social interventions, little hands-on guidance exists for designing these integral interventions. This study aimed to examine the interventions reported in the literature guided by Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles. The goal is to extract insights that inform future practices in co-designing integral interventions for active ageing. METHODS: The systematic review focused on community-level interventions promoting active ageing that integrated physical, social, and digital elements, i.e., integral interventions. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed. The included interventions were analysed abductively based on the CBPR principles. RESULTS: A total of 13 studies were included, and 24 design considerations were generated under eight categories. Further reflection identified the interrelated nature of these design considerations and pinpointed the gaps in current research. This study highlights the urgency and importance of sharing recruitment methods and resource allocation details, recording and reporting collaboration specifics, and disseminating findings to stakeholders beyond academia. CONCLUSIONS: This study offers valuable insights and practical guidance to researchers and practitioners developing community-level integral interventions for active ageing. The findings also serve as a starting point for accumulating knowledge and practice in co-designing integral interventions for active ageing at the community level. The next crucial phase involves evaluating these design considerations within real-world cases to assess their applicability and identify potential areas for improvement.

How Does Walkability Change Behavior? A Comparison between Different Age Groups in the Netherlands.

Empirical research provides evidence that, in neighborhoods with higher walkability, individuals make more walking trips. However, it is not clear what the exact nature is of the relationships between neighborhood walkability and walking trips, since a higher walking frequency can be explained in different ways. This study examined whether the extra walking trips in better walkable neighborhoods are related primarily to trip generation, destination choice, or transport mode choice and whether this is the same for different age groups. A neighborhood fixed effects regression analysis was conducted in a first step to obtain a walkability measure for each neighborhood in the Netherlands including systematic as well as unobserved effects. Subsequently, the estimated fixed effects were used as walkability data for a path analysis based on a causal model to test the hypotheses stated. The results of the path analysis show direct relationships of neighborhood walkability with trip generation, destination choice, and transport mode choice, after controlling for the mutual relationships between the activity and trip variables. Comparing different age groups (i.e., children, adults, and elderly), the differences found mostly concerned the relationship between neighborhood walkability and trip generation. We concluded therefore that conditions for walkability are not the same for all age groups.