Effectiveness of Community-Based Health Promotion Program on Functional Fitness, Depression and Quality of Life in Middle-Aged and Older Adults

Performing of exercise program for several times per week is currently incompatible with the community health program mode. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a 14-week community-based health promotion program on functional fitness, depression and quality of life in older adults. The health promotion program in this study involved with four themes, including dementia prevention, nutrition, oral hygiene and fall prevention Three-hundred and seven subjects above 55 years old were recruited separately into exercise intervention group (n = 159) and control group (n = 148) by randomized sampling. However, only 200 participants completely performed the functional fitness test and questionnaires before (pre) and after (post) the study intervention. The frailty level of subjects was determined by Chinese-Canadian study of health and aging clinical frailty scale before intervention. Subsequent community-based health promotion program was performed (110 min per day, once per week, for 14 weeks) by exercise intervention group. Participants in control group were maintained the habitual life style during the study. The results after 14-week health promotion program have shown that strength and cardiovascular fitness (CF) of participants were significantly improved in exercise intervention group compared to control group. The statistical main effect of these improvements in strength and cardiovascular fitness are from the non-frailty subjects. Depression score (DS) was significantly attenuated in exercise group compared to control group. Nevertheless, agility performance of older adults in this study was declined after exercise intervention. No differences were reported in body weight and flexibility between the groups. This is the first study to demonstrate that 14-week community based health promotion program enhanced the strength and CF in non-frailty elderly and improved DS in pre-frailty elderly. However, no positive effect on agility performance was noticed.