Grant: Emerging Team Grant: Alliances in Mobility in Aging - LOI

'Resiliency' is defined as the capacity to navigate and negotiate individual and community resources to sustain well-being(1). Active living and physical activity are critical to the health, mobility and well-being of older adults(2), and, we argue, their resiliency. There is established evidence that physical activity, broadly defined, has numerous health benefits for older adults(2-7), Despite these benefits, many older Canadians are still not sufficiently active to reap the cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and metabolic protection that physical activity offers. Less than half of Canadians aged 55 or older report being physically active in leisure-time(8). In 2008-09 the province established 18 outdoor parks for seniors through its ActNow BC initiative. The Parks offer specialized equipment for seniors to improve their balance, agility and strength. This proposal is to support an Emerging Team to conduct a five year study to examine how Seniors Parks influence the health, mobility and well-being, and development of resilience among older adults living in urban, rural and remote communities. This Letter of Intent outlines a quasi-experimental research design comparing users and non-users of the parks to examine the influence of Seniors Parks on older adults living in urban, rural and remote communities in British Columbia (BC). Our team is interested in examining how both individual characteristics and local community contexts contribute to physical activity, mobility, health/well-being and resilience and how such factors may shift over time (i.e., across the seasons of the year).