Empowerment-based elderly healthcare: dementia-friendly community and peer coaching for frailty intervention

Abstract

Hong Kong elders are among the longest living in the world. Physical frailty and cognitive impairment, however, are major challenges for elderly healthcare. The projected sharp fall in working age to elderly population ratio (1.8: 1 by 2041) will mean serious manpower shortage for healthcare. Moving away from traditional care model, two projects were started to empowering older persons and the community in taking control of their health. Project Sunrise is a district-based community shared-care model for dementia in an age-friendly community, with an aim to build up community care capacity, and to align with the government’s community care and healthcare voucher schemes. Project GrandMove combines concepts of productive and health ageing to address the problem of frailty in a sustainable way; it encourages elders to engage in effective exercising habit by mobilizing older adults as paid coaches. The goals are to increase the number of service providers and promote self-care.