Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Active aging aims to promote optimal aging through psychological wellbeing, functional independence, and social connection. Modifiable behaviors that support elders' cognition, physical capacity, and/or social participation delivered either alone or in combination, can effectively enhance elders' psychological wellbeing and functional independence (i.e., cognitive and/or physical capacity). However, the established literature has failed to adequately account for the impact of older adults' agentic resiliency in optimal aging trajectories. This project aimed to examine the immediate psychosocial benefits of an intensive 4-week multi-domain active aging (AA) program with and without a resilience training module (AA or AA+R), relative to an active control (AC) condition. We hypothesized that 1) older adults in the AA or AA+R groups would display greater post-program improvements in psychological wellness and functional independence relative to the AC group, and 2) the AA+R condition would display further gains relative to AA group alone. The AA and AA+R groups completed 4 weeks of online active aging training, including three 15-min training modules for aerobic exercise, cognitive training, and social engagement twice per week followed by 2 practice sessions. The AA+R group further received a 15-min resilience training session, while the AA group watched a filler video. Composite scores indexing psychosocial wellbeing and functional independence (i.e., physical and cognitive capacity) were assessed at baseline and post-intervention. Each psychosocial and functional independence outcome was assessed independently, employing mixed model ANOVAs. Results from this study address an important gap in the literature by elucidating whether additional resilience training further enhances psychosocial wellbeing and functional independence over-and-above an active aging program. This project also includes a follow-up assessment which is often overlooked in the literature.