Healthcare policies and programmes for older persons: Exploring awareness among stakeholders

Human rights are for all, regardless of age. The older adults are seen as vulnerable because biological, psychological and social ageing predispose the ageing person to frailty, infirmity, and in many cases dependency, setting the older person apart from the rest of the population in need of special protection and rights. Although the implementation of legislation, policies, and a package of integrated programmes and projects to cater to the needs of older persons had helped them to uplift their status, more has to be done to stem the increase of the reach of laws in a more fruitful manner.

To develop a colloquial structured Healthcare Policies & Programmes Awareness Questionnaire and assess the awareness about the government healthcare provisions and benefits available for senior citizens among health professionals, older patients, and their caregivers.

This study was conducted in two phases, the development of the questionnaire consisting of relevant healthcare national policies and programmes followed by a cross sectional pilot study on 335 participants.

The level of awareness was only 45.6% among health professionals followed by 26.4% & 22.2% of awareness among the caregivers and the older adults respectively.

There is a huge gap between the healthcare providers and healthcare takers knowledge due to which the preventive and promotive care of older adults is poor in our country. There is a need to strengthen institutions and mechanism that can more systematically promote interaction between researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders who can influence the uptake of the research findings in a synergistic manner.