Supporting the mobilization of health assets among older community dwellers residing in senior-only households in Singap

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Open Access

Supporting the mobilization of health assets among older community dwellers residing in senior-only households in Singapore: a qualitative study Betsy Seah1* , Geir Arild Espnes2, Emily Neo Kim Ang1, Jian Yang Lim1, Yanika Kowitlawakul1 and Wenru Wang1

Abstract Background: Care activities provided by community health practitioners for older adults primarily focused on disease prevention and management. However, healthy longevity can go beyond disease prevention and management and promote greater well-being by tapping into the accrual of resources that older adults possess using the salutogenic approach. This study explored how health resources are used among older adults who are residing in senior-only households to promote and maintain health, with the intent of providing insights into how community health practitioners can support these older adults via asset-based strategies. Methods: We adopted a descriptive qualitative study design using focus group discussions. Twenty-seven older adults who either lived alone or with their spouses were purposively sampled from an elderly populated residential estate in Singapore. Six focus group discussions, conducted from December 2016 to May 2017, were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: The themes that emerged were ‘tapping on internal self-care repository’, ‘maintaining and preserving informal social support’, and ‘enabling self by using environmental aids’, and an eco-map of aging assets was used to capture an overview of internal and external resources. With the repository of personal strengths, knowledge, and experiences, these older adults were generally resourceful in navigating around their resource-rich environments to cope with everyday life stressors and promote health. However, they were occasionally limited by individual factors that affected their comprehension, access, maintenance, and utilization of resources. (Continued on next page)

* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Clinical Research Centre, Block MD11, Level 2, 10 Medical Drive, Singapore 117597, Singapore Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly f