Towards a Decision Support Tool to Prescribe Recreation for Older Adults in Social Isolation (RxOSI)

Social isolation is the objective lack of social connection. Social isolation in older adults was an issue before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the issue only got exacerbated during this period. Today, loneliness is a bigger public health problem than obesity, and often isolated older adults are lon...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bagaria, Namrata
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Decision support tool
goals
older adults
recreation
requirements
social isolation
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Summary:Social isolation is the objective lack of social connection. Social isolation in older adults was an issue before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the issue only got exacerbated during this period. Today, loneliness is a bigger public health problem than obesity, and often isolated older adults are lonely too. Recreation activities offer physical, mental, social and cognitive benefits to older adults, including reduction of social isolation and loneliness. Social prescriptions, which have gained momentum in the United Kingdom and Canada, usually include a diverse range of non-clinical interventions, such as educational classes, arts and culture engagement, peer-run social groups, and nature-based activities. The state-of-the-art literature recommends multiple interventions for social isolation and loneliness; however it falls short of explaining the basis of these recommendations. Decision support tools have been extensively used in clinical medicine and they help standardize the quality of care and improve physician workflow. This paper describes a thesis on a qualitative study that will iteratively build and validate a decision support tool (RxOSI) recommending recreational activities to older adults for reducing social isolation. The paper provides a brief overview on the state of the art, challenges, proposed solution, methodology, contributions and work in progress.
ISSN:2332-6441
DOI:10.1109/RE54965.2022.00028