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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Promotion of health in older people
— a randomised controlled trial of health risk appraisal in British general practice | | Author(s) | Danielle Harari, Steve Iliffe, Kalpa Kharicha |
| Journal title | Age and Ageing, vol 37, no 5, September 2008 |
| Pages | pp 565-571 |
| Source | http://www.ageing.oupjournals.org |
| Keywords | Ill health ; Preventative medicine ; General practice ; Clinical surveys ; London. |
| Annotation | There is inadequate evidence to support currently formulated NHS strategies to achieve health promotion and preventative care in older people through broad-based screening and assessment in primary care. The most extensively evaluated delivery instrument for this purpose is the Health Risk Appraisal (HRA). This article describes a randomised controlled trial using the HRA to evaluate the effect on health behaviour and preventative care uptake in older people in three London primary care group practices. 2503 independent community-dwelling patients aged 65+ received a self-administered Health Risk Appraisal for Older Persons (HRA-O) questionnaire leading to computer generated individualised written feedback to participants and general practitioners (GPs), integrated into practice information technology (IT) systems. All primary care staff received training in preventative health in older people. Of 2050 individuals randomised, 2006 respondents (80.1%; intervention 904, controls 1066) were available for analysis. Intervention group respondents reported slightly higher pneumococcal vaccination uptake and equivocal improvement in physical activity levels compared with controls. No significant differences were observed for any other categories of health behaviour or preventative care measures at 1 year follow-up. HRA-O implemented in this way resulted in minimal improvement of health behaviour or uptake of preventative care measures on older people. Supplementary reinforcement involving contact by health professionals with patients over and above routine clinical encounters may be a prerequisite to the effectiveness of IT-based delivery systems for health promotion for older people. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-081008215 A |
| Classmark | CH: LK2: L5: 3G: 82L |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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