An Individually Tailored Program to Increase Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors among the Elderly

Abstract

A healthy lifestyle among the elderly is associated with improved health. However, many older adults are not engaging in such behavior. The purpose of the study was to develop an individually tailored online/telephone program to increase healthy lifestyle behaviors among community-dwelling elderly people. The program includes individually tailored healthy lifestyle recommendations based on participants’ functional level. Community-dwelling elderly people aged 60+ years (n = 77; mean age: 72.98 ± 6.49) participated in the study. Significant associations were observed between health promotion activities and health status (r = 0.23, p = 0.04) and physical functional level (r = 0.44, p < 0.001). Twenty-seven percent of participants claimed that they learned “a lot” of new things about themselves, and 31% claimed that the recommendations received were new to them. Most participants engaged in the recommendations at least 1–2 times a week. Regression analyses showed that barriers significantly predicted reduced compliance with the health-related recommendations received (adjusted R2 = 0.18). The main barrier for compliance was inaccessible information about services (32.46% of the participants). The most prevalent facilitator for compliance with the recommendation was health behavior motivation (59.74% of the participants). In conclusion, this study provided evidence on the effectiveness of a multicomponent tailored intervention program among the elderly in increasing health-related knowledge and behavior about the recommendations.