How does the environment in and around the home impact social care and health outcomes for older people?

Healthy ageing is the promotion of positive health and wellbeing in older people and is an extremely relevant and important issue due to the impact it can have at an individual and government level. One of the main aspects of healthy ageing indicated by the World Health Organisation, is how people interact with their surroundings and local environment. However, the relationships between an individual’s surroundings and the risk to preventable adverse social care and health outcomes is largely unknown. Two common outcomes that may be influenced by an individual’s surroundings are care home admissions and falls. These outcomes are also known to incur significant costs to the NHS, local authorities and government. The risk to the outcomes may also differ depending on if someone has a dementia diagnosis, and the associated financial costs are increased.

We aim to perform a national study for older people living in Wales, investigating the relationships between an individual’s surroundings, key environmental measures, and specific adverse outcomes: care home admissions and falls. As dementia is a global issue we also aim to see if and how the relationships differ for people who have a dementia diagnosis.

We will do this by creating measures of accessibility to local services, such as general practices, and measures of how easy it is to walk to local surroundings, such as green spaces, from an individual’s residence. It is possible to see how these measures impact care home admissions and falls by linking and observing anonymised data from the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage databank.

Subsequently, by investigating what measures change the chance of a care home admission or fall we can target preventative measures.

We hope to discover risk factors for falls and care home admissions in and around the home that can be modified. Using this evidence, we can advise individuals, local authorities and Welsh government on what aspects they should change to reduce the risk of a fall or care home admission. 

We also hope to discover if the risks are different for those diagnosed with dementia and advise accordingly. By doing this we hope to reduce the pressure on individuals, families and local authorities and help people have a better way of life.

We plan to involve key stakeholders and members of the public throughout the project. We will include members of the public in the production of policy and planning recommendations to ensure they accurately reflect services users’ perspectives, thereby maximising the impact of these research outputs on policy makers, other stakeholders and the general public.

We aim to disseminate our knowledge to the research community by showcasing our research at relevant events throughout the life course of the project. We will also utilise Swansea University’s existing knowledge transfer team to maximise the dissemination of our findings. The team would focus on providing our research to key decision makers within provider organisations, policymakers and others who can use it to improve health, housing and social care services and policies.