Promoting Successful Aging among Older Adults with Disabilities: Empowerment through Interventions

• In Event: 158 - Section on Disability and Society Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04.

Abstract

This paper offers a theoretically anchored overview of diverse interventions aimed to promote and support successful aging. We use the Preventive and Corrective Proactivity (PCP) Model of Successful Aging as our organizing framework. Interventions are reviewed that aim to reduce environmental stressors, increase internal and external resources, enhance proactive adaptations or directly impact quality of life (QOL) outcomes for older adults. The exemplars of interventions that we provide range from micro level interventions, targeting individuals or dyads to mezzo level, community focused interventions and to macro level policies that better the lives of older adults. An innovative orientation of our paper is acknowledgement that successful aging can be promoted even among frail and vulnerable individuals. Furthermore, we consider interventions that foster preventive behaviors, such as planning for the future, health promotion and civic engagement. Such preventive interventions can build resources and delay some stressors. We selected innovative interventions in each of the areas covered to showcase promising future directions for interventions with older adults. Our review of interventions also calls for inclusive new approaches that can benefit an increasingly long lived and diverse population of older adults. Guidelines for research, practice, and policy are noted based on areas of current strengths as well as currently neglected approaches to interventions that support successful aging.

Authors

• Eva Kahana, Case Western Reserve University

• Boaz Kahana, Cleveland State University

• Nancy Kropf, Georgia State University

• Kaitlyn Barnes, Case Western Reserve University