SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, June 13 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Ministry of Health, through the General Directorate of Public Health of the Canary Islands Health Service, together with the Canary Islands Federation of Municipalities (FECAM) have prepared a guide called ‘Recommendations for working on healthy aging in municipalities’, with the aim of objective of helping public bodies to promote effective actions that promote an improvement in the quality of life of the elderly.
The guide has been developed in the context of the Health Promotion and Prevention Strategy of the National Health System (EPSP) and its adaptation to the Canary Islands Strategy for Health Promoting Municipalities and Islands (ECIMPS) as a common tool for all the municipalities of the Canary Islands, which includes recommendations focused on physical activity, the promotion of healthy habits and the importance of emotional health, among others.
After the FECAM consulted and collected information from the 88 municipalities of the Canary Islands on the actions they carried out with the elderly, they were analyzed by a working group formed between the Health Promotion service and the FECAM to assess the effectiveness of each one of the actions and thus achieve improvements in the active aging of the population, within the framework of the scientific evidence published to date.
The result of this analysis is ‘Recommendations for working on Healthy Aging in municipalities’, a guide that sets out the set of recommendations aimed at promoting the quality of life of the elderly, prioritizing the actions with the greatest known evidence.
Over the next few months, the General Directorate of Public Health and FECAM will work with local organizations in the archipelago to disseminate these recommendations in order to achieve greater benefits for the elderly.
GOALS
The objective of the guide is to promote a change in the way of perceiving and dealing with ageing, fostering friendly environments for the elderly, healthy lifestyles, favoring social participation in decision-making and equity, among other objectives. For this, the document includes the actions to be developed by the municipalities to promote healthy aging related to healthy habits such as diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol as well as those related to therapeutic adherence, cognitive deterioration, loneliness unwanted and emotional well-being combined in five strategic lines.
The new publication is available for consultation on the website of the Canary Islands Health Service, at the following link:
The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that the aging of the population is one of the greatest successes in public health, social and economic development, and it will be sustainable if programs and policies are established that improve health, participation and the safety of the elderly.
This senescence is a physiological process that begins at conception and causes changes in the characteristics of people throughout the life cycle. The diversity in the result of the process is not random and depends on the actions carried out throughout life, environments, sex or ethnicity. Chronological age is not indicative of changes that will occur with aging.
