Abstract

While many physical activity interventions for older adults have been designed and implemented, very few have been scaled-up. Choose to Move [CTM], is an effective, health-promoting intervention for older adults–the product of phased research and scale up in British Columbia, Canada across 7-years (2015-2021). This presentation shares the Choose to Move journey from start-up to scale-up and CTM's reach to engage more than 3000 older adults.

Outline

As one-third of Canadians will be older adults (>65y) by 2050, it is of no surprise that healthy aging is a public health priority. Despite a plethora of effective physical activity interventions for older adults, few have been implemented at scale. This matters, as to have impact at a population level effective interventions must be scaled up—and sustained. Choose to Move [CTM] is the Active Aging Research Team at University of British Columbia's (BC) flagship health-promoting intervention. CTM is the product of phased research, implementation and scale up across 7-years (2015-2021). It is a flexible, choice-based intervention, co-designed and adapted with feedback from older adults, community, and government partners. CTM significantly enhanced older adults' (> 65 yrs) physical activity, mobility and social connectedness and decreased loneliness in those who participated. It was developed using frameworks for effective implementation and scale-up and core implementation science principles. The reach of CTM has been substantial (>3000 older adults). In my presentation I will share the Choose to Move journey from start-up to scale-up. I will pause to focus on how along the way we adapted Choose to Move for different populations, community contexts and delivery partners, and for the virtual environment when COVID-19 dramatically changed the lives of older adults in Canada and around the world.