The organizations involved are: Regional Department of Health Region of Sicily – ASP Ragusa – AOUP Paolo Giaccone Palermo – Dr. Gaetano Iachelli, Regional President of Medicine of the Sports, INNOVA START UP, University of the Palermo Studies, Feder Healthcare ANCI – Serena Association.
The number of people involved will be the elderly aged 65-79, i.e. pensioners for the next three years.
The AHA Rererence Site intends to promote the concept of active ageing, aware that this assumes an ever more important role to address the challenges of an aging population, and has several meanings:
- Enabling both women and men to stay active longer in the life in the community and in the world of work;
- Facilitate active citizenship through the contribution of older men and women they can dare to society, even through intergenerational exchange;
- Make both women and men keep healthy and alive in independently as they get older, thanks to an approach to healthy ageing, and arranging domestic environments in such a way as to allow older people to stay in their homes for as long as possible;
- Recognize and value the role of older people in the community and promote their participation in social, civil, economic and cultural life, facilitating pathways autonomy and physical, mental and social well-being;
- Facing and contrasting the phenomenon of loneliness, meaning by this term every phenomenon of exclusion, disconnection and social and civil marginalization by origin or causes related to personal, social, health, economic or cultural and promotes the drafting of projects and the enhancement of experiences aimed at understand and prevent the emergence of such phenomena;
- Promote intergenerational relationships, with a view to solidarity between generations;
- Promote participation in socially useful activities;
- Activate new tools to bring out situations of fragility related to the phenomenon of loneliness.
Projects
We are currently looking for funding to start the project activities
Areas of Good Practice
The first two phases in the start-up phase, once the necessary funds have been found, include:
Phase 1: Champion Select.
The population to be selected and involved is made up of the personnel who will have access to retirement in the following three-year period
Phase 2: Training through thematic workshops.
In this phase the recruited population will be involved in training activities in relation to various macro-topics:
- Nutrition (the adoption of a Mediterranean-type food model, is essential not only to lower the risk of major chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, tumors, but even in counteracting the decline cognitive related to ageing);
- Computer literacy (opportunity to acquire resources and knowledge of the network computer science through technological literacy training courses in order to reduce the generation gap);
- Physical activity (it is a key element in achieving the objectives of the strategy of healthy and active aging due to its ability to preserve independence functional in old age and to maintain a good quality of life);
- Art, culture, folklore (cultural participation stimulates brain functions, cognitions and social inclusion with tangible biological effects on nervous systems- endocrine and immune system, it promises to be a resource for health promotion, resilience, especially after the pandemic, which has hit the most fragile and marked lives with invisible wounds generated by the winter of relationships. Cultural engagement as
form of contrast to cognitive decline); - Languages (Many studies in fact identify bilingualism among the “reserve” factors cognitive” against dementia. The confirmation comes from the fact that people capable of speaking two languages seems to keep a brain younger and longer. A result that was also observed among those who speak minority languages or the dialect. Own as Sardinian centenarians teach us who, for the most part, do not have any diseases degenerative. Bilingualism in fact helps shape the brain, allowing it not to wasting resources and thus avoiding the involvement of multiple brain regions susceptible to ageing);
- Cooking (stimulating the elderly population to consciously reflect on issues related to nutrition, the origin and seasonality of foods, their quality and the need to combat food waste and false information in matter, on the direct link between agriculture and food)
Website, and other social media links to the AHA Reference Site
The Sicily Region Health Department: https://pti.regione.sicilia.it/portal/page/portal/PIR_PORTALE/PIR_LaStrutturaRegionale/PIR_AssessoratoSalute
ASP RAGUSA: https://www.asp.rg.it/
AOUP Paolo Giaccone of Palermo: https://www.policlinico.pa.it/portal/index.php?option=displaypage&Itemid=389&op=page&SubMenu=