How Elderly People Create Meaning from Prevention Actions with Their Food Habits: Comparisons between Public Policies, Elderly People and Facilitators' Views on Actions Aiming at Preventing Malnutrition and Loss of Autonomy View Digital Media

Poster Session
Julie Mayer  

Malnutrition and loss of autonomy in the elderly have raised as public health issues and appear nowadays in the political agenda. Public policies have published recommendations to develop prevention actions. Among stakeholders who develop such actions are NGOs. Our research focuses on one of these NGOs, implementing prevention actions through the intervention of a dietician and a cooking chef. Thanks to observations of the prevention actions and to semi-structured interviews, we analyse how elderly people interpret the actions when they take part into them, in comparison with the original objectives and with the facilitators’ objectives. We measure effects of the elderly people participation, on their social representations and practices, related to food and health, in the wider context of their ageing process. Results are articulated in two themes: food habits and social relations. Cooking habits and eating habits of the household are strongly impacted by the evolution of its structure (when children leave, when someone dies, when leaving alone), by the health conditions of its members (if one becomes ill) and by the social support given and received. Prevention actions have an impact within these biographical changes: the action can be interpreted as a leisure activity reducing the feeling of loneliness for a few hours, as a way to validate existing eating practices, as a way to compare oneself to the other participants in terms of health status and of cooking skills. The participants thus redefine the purpose of the prevention actions, offering potential to improve their design.