Increasing the healthy activities of older people: A behavioural approach

Despite considerable resources being directed towards healthy living initiatives and mass media campaigns urging older people to adopt more physically active lifestyles, 75.2% of Australians over the age of 65 were considered “sedentary” in a recent National Heath Survey (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006). Improving the health and wellbeing of older people involves arranging supportive contexts and self-management of more physically active behaviours – an area that has received surprisingly little attention by behaviour analysts.This paper explores mainstream, approaches to increasing the healthy activities of older people, gives the rationale for a comprehensive, home-based behavioural program, and presents a behaviour analytic perspective as it pertains to the future of health promotion and healthy living initiatives for older people.