Article Text
PDF
Abstract
Objectives To identify trials of home-based health behaviour change interventions for frail older people, describe intervention content and explore its potential contribution to intervention effects.
Design 15 bibliographic databases, and reference lists and citations of key papers, were searched for randomised controlled trials of home-based behavioural interventions reporting behavioural or health outcomes.
Setting Participants' homes.
Participants Community-dwelling adults aged ≥65 years with frailty or at risk of frailty.
Primary and secondary outcome measures Trials were coded for effects on thematically clustered behavioural, health and well-being outcomes. Intervention content was described using 96 behaviour change techniques, and 9 functions (eg, education, environmental restructuring).
Results 19 eligible trials reported 22 interventions. Physical functioning was most commonly assessed (19 interventions). Behavioural outcomes were assessed for only 4 interventions. Effectiveness on most outcomes was limited, with at most 50% of interventions showing potential positive effects on behaviour, and 42% on physical functioning. 3 techniques (instruction on how to perform behaviour, adding objects to environment, restructuring physical environment) and 2 functions (education and enablement) were more commonly found in interventions showing potential than those showing no potential to improve physical function. Intervention content was not linked to effectiveness on other outcomes.
Conclusions Interventions appeared to have greatest impact on physical function where they included behavioural instructions, environmental modification and practical social support. Yet, mechanisms of effects are unclear, because impact on behavioural outcomes has rarely been considered. Moreover, the robustness of our findings is also unclear, because interventions have been poorly reported. Greater engagement with behavioural science is needed when developing and evaluating home-based health interventions.
PROSPERO registration number ID=CRD42014010370
- Older people
- Frailty
- Intervention
- Behaviour change
- Systematic review
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Twitter Follow Benjamin Gardner @drbengardner
Contributors BG and KW conceived and designed the study. KK, SI, JM, CG and VMD contributed to the design of the study. AJ ran the systematic searches. AJ, CB and BG extracted data. BG, KK and KW resolved discrepancies between coders in data extraction. BG analysed all data and drafted the manuscript, which was iteratively refined by all authors. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding This work is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA), grant reference number 12/192/10, and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment.
Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Health Technology Assessment programme, NIHR, NHS or the Department of Health.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement The data set is available on request from the corresponding author (KW).