Table 4.
Practice, policy implications and areas for future research based on identified themes.
| Theme | Practice/Policy implications | Areas for future research |
|---|---|---|
| Personal resilience | Encourage opportunities for community-dwelling older adults to volunteer | Establish the statistical relationship between volunteering, personal resilience and wellbeing Investigate factors that influence older adults volunteering |
| Encourage opportunities for community-dwelling older adults to participate in community-based activities | Establish the personal benefits of participating in community-based activities Investigate factors that influence older adults participating in community-based activities | |
| Ensure community-dwelling older adults are aware of the opportunities available to them in the community | Investigate media avenues community-dwelling older adults use to find out about local community-based activities | |
| Community resilience | Ensure community facilities are affordable to encourage community organizations and community-based activities for older adults | Undertake a cost-benefit analysis of community-based activities for older adults |
| Should external facilitation be required to instigate community-based activity among older adults, ensure it is designed on an engagement-participation-empowerment basis to encourage ownership and collaborative leadership by community members | Investigate the role of external facilitation of community-based activity in rural communities and its short, medium and long-term impact on developing community resilience Explore the effectiveness of the engagement-participation-empowerment model in a variety of contexts | |
| Support and facilitate grassroots advocacy among community-dwelling older adults directed toward reducing inequities | Explore the effectiveness of grassroots advocacy in reducing structural inequities Investigate factors that influence older adult participation in grassroots advocacy | |
| Re-frame language and policies to reflect a strengths-based approach to resilience in community-dwelling older adults, recognizing the contribution older adults are making to the resilience of their communities | Evaluate the impact of re-framing language and policies related to community-dwelling adults to reflect a strengths-based approach to resilience within local government and non-government agencies |