Background: As Canada’s population ages, older adults will require housing to meet their needs, requiring changes to their social and physical environments and potentially moving homes. This may cause disruptions to older adults’ lives, such as the loss of social networks and associated leisure activities. Despite leisure’s numerous benefits for older adults, limited research has focused on how leisure may help older adults make challenging transitions, such as moving homes.
Objective: To explore leisure’s role in older adults moving to new homes in London, ON.
Methods: This ethnographic study involved post-move narrative interviews and follow-up interviews discussing where and how 12 community-dwelling participants engaged in leisure before and after their move. Activity diaries and mental maps were used in the interviews to aid in understanding the spatial and temporal context of the older adults’ transition.
Findings: Findings suggest older adults attempt to adjust to their new homes by engaging in leisure to help maintain or establish new components of their identity, develop a sense of home through creating attachment to place, and maintain or build new social networks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, leisure has helped participants to explore London’s outdoor amenities and become accustomed to connecting with others through technology.
Discussion: This research has implications for policy makers and practitioners in the community to develop strategies for maintaining social networks and creating leisure opportunities for older adults moving homes. This could include developing transition programs that use leisure to assist older adults in settling into new neighbourhoods.
Context: Retirement is a stressful transition. While some seem to live this passage very well, for others it is sometimes more difficult. While the diversity of retirement life projects is reinventing old age, it is still difficult for some seniors to make sense of this stage of their lives. Several studies have highlighted the importance for seniors to capitalize on meaningful activities that harness their potential for better aging. Although seniors have many opportunities to maintain optimal social participation, it is often difficult to identify meaningful activities that promote their quality of life. A team has therefore developed a leisure education program to support the adaptation of new retirees at this stage of their lives. This program has three main themes: 1) positive vision of retirement; 2) awareness of leisure and its scope; 3) adopting an optimal leisure lifestyle. This program was piloted in a pre-experimental context facilitated by research assistants. It was important to understand the conditions for implementing this program in a community context. Objectives: The main objective of this presentation is to present the results of a study than aim to implement the REAL program in partnership with community leisure centers. This project proposes to evaluate the effects of this program on new retirees as well as the determinants of the offer of this program within a community organization. Results: The study demonstrated the acceptability and feasibility of implementing the community-based program in an online version. It highlighted the positive effects of the program for new retirees.
Objectives: The purpose of this analysis was to assess associations of environmental variables with physical activity and sedentary time among older adults. Methods: Data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging linked to the Canadian Active Living Environments (Can-ALE) dataset, ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution concentrations, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) greenness were used for analysis. The main outcome variables were self-reported physical activity (low, moderate, and high) and sedentary time (low, moderate and high) as measured by a modified version of the Physical Activity for Elderly Scale. Results: The analytic sample consisted of adults aged 45 and older (n = 36580, mean age 62.6±10.2, 51% female). Adjusted ordinal regression models consistently demonstrated that the highest ALE category (most well-connected built environment) was positively related to both physical activity and higher sedentary time. For example, among females aged 75 and older, being in the highest ALE category was associated with 1.93 higher odds of being in the higher physical activity category (OR = 1.93, 95%CI = 1.12-3.30). Higher NDVI scores were also associated with higher odds of reporting higher physical activity and sedentary time, while PM2.5 was not significantly associated with the outcomes. Conclusion: An environment characterized by features facilitating active living may facilitate higher levels of physical activity, but may also facilitate higher levels of sedentary time in older adults. There may be other contextual factors that need to be considered in future research and public health messaging aimed at movement behaviours in older adults.
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities emphasizes the creation of equitable access to the urban environment, suggesting the lack thereof could hinder the health and quality of life of people with disabilities. Determining the accessibility of the neighbourhood environment requires attention to the diverse needs and challenges related to different types of disabilities. Given the lack of extant literature reviews on neighbourhood accessibility for people with sensory disabilities, our scoping review aims to understand how the neighbourhood built environment influences the out-of-home mobility and social participation of people, particularly older adults, with i) low vision and blindness, and ii) deafness and hard of hearing. The findings from this review guide the adaptation of a user-led neighbourhood environment audit tool to help people with sensory disabilities evaluate the outdoor built environment for walkability/wheelability issues. Peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers from eight databases, published in English from 2000 to 2020, were reviewed using a modified PRISMA approach. Preliminary findings suggest neighbourhood features such as i) street crossings (traffic signals, tactile surfaces, auditory cues), ii) sidewalks (temporary/permanent barriers, width), iii) traffic safety (detecting and negotiating vehicles and cyclists), iv) street furniture (seating, transit stops, lighting), v) landmarks and signage, and vi) land-use (mixed-use, open spaces) are important for the out-of-home mobility and social participation of people with sensory disabilities. Findings were validated through consultation with two people with sensory disabilities to assess their relevance as guiding concepts for adaption of the existing neighbourhood environment audit tool.
Library and information science (LIS) scholars have demonstrated the importance of public libraries as hubs of sociocultural connection, with relationships between patrons, library staff cultivating social capital and reducing social isolation. Gerontologists have highlighted sociocultural links as having a measurable, positive impact on older adults’ physical and mental wellbeing, including bolstering feelings of social inclusion. Despite the clear intersection between these findings, there is little synergy between gerontology and LIS. This paper draws on research stemming from a larger project, “Aging in Place with Public Libraries”, that seeks to bring attention to the overlooked role public libraries, as social infrastructures, play in bolstering social inclusion for community-dwelling older adults. Here we report on the first phase of this study, in which we conducted an environmental scan of existing public library programs and services for older adult patrons in 30 Ontario public library systems, covering rural and urban locales, as well as First Nations public libraries. Findings illuminate trends in public library programming for older adults and contribute to community gerontology, a theoretical framework of research and practice that aims to advance the understanding of communities as fundamental contexts for aging and its diversity. Importantly, as COVID has shifted programming for older adults to virtual spaces, we conclude with an examination of shifts in understandings of community spaces as digital spaces and the impact this can have on supports for older adults and understandings of social inclusion/exclusion.