Housing for the elderly
Mapping review
|Updated
A systematic list of references.
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Key message
The Norwegian State Housing Bank (Husbanken) commissioned a report from The Social Research Unit at the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services to develop and conduct a systematic search, and sort possibly relevant references. The goal was to identify studies investigating the health effect of, and experiences with, housing interventions for healthy elderly > 60 years.
Methods
We conducted a systematic search of the literature, including medical and social science databases, for empirical studies. The search was conducted in December2012. The authors independently assessed the identified references for inclusion/exclusion and discussed their assessments in pairs. We then sorted the references according to interventions and study design.
Results
We identified 8652references in total. Of these, we found 66 to be relevant according to the inclusion criteria.
The possibly relevant references were sorted into 4 different categories according to type of housing intervention for the elderly. The references were also sorted according to study design. Sorting the references by geography was not considered practical, as this was not described in most of the abstracts.
Relatively few of the included studies applied a controlled design. However, most of the controlled studies and reviews that were included in this report were investigating the effect of home modifications and assistive technology. It would be potentially valuable to continue the project as a full systematic review on such interventions. However, this requires that we specify in more detail the relevant populations, interventions and outcomes.
We have sorted and listed all possibly relevant references, but we have neither read the papers in fulltext, critically appraised their methodological quality, nor synthesised their conclusions.