TY  - JOUR
A1  - Slaug, Björn
A1  - Chiatti, Carlos
A1  - Oswald, Frank
A1  - Kaspar, Roman
A1  - Schmidt, Steven M.
T1  - Improved housing accessibility for older people in Sweden and Germany : short term costs and long-term gains
T2  - International journal of environmental research and public health
N2  - The physical housing environment is important to facilitate activities of daily living (ADL) for older people. A hindering environment may lead to ADL dependence and thus increase the need for home services, which is individually restricting and a growing societal burden. This study presents simulations of policy changes with regard to housing accessibility that estimates the potential impact specifically on instrumental activities of daily living (I-ADL), usage of home services, and related costs. The models integrate empirical data to test the hypothesis that a policy providing funding to remove the five most severe environmental barriers in the homes of older people who are at risk of developing dependence in I-ADL, can maintain independence and reduce the need for home services. In addition to official statistics from state agencies in Sweden and Germany, we utilized published results from the ENABLE-AGE and other scientific studies to generate the simulations. The simulations predicted that new policies that remove potentially hindering housing features would improve I-ADL performance among older people and reduce the need for home services. Our findings suggest that a policy change can contribute to positive effects with regard to I-ADL independence among older people and to a reduction of societal burden.
KW  - ageing society
KW  - ADL
KW  - housing adaptations
KW  - environmental barriers
KW  - simulations
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/44739
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-447397
SN  - 1660-4601
SN  - 1661-7827
N1  - © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
VL  - 14
IS  - 9, Art. 964
SP  - 1
EP  - 13
PB  - MDPI AG
CY  - Basel
ER  -