The key objectives we wanted to achieve by implementing the AgeWell project were: Objective 1. Study the characteristics and needs of middle-aged and older adults in Europe regarding multimodal physical activity participation and healthy ageing knowledge, and build upon an existing evidence-based intervention (Prime Time of Life) that was piloted in Ireland, so that it is suitable for EU participants and fitness professionals. Objective 2. Develop AgeWell, an 8-week digital physical activity and health education programme and platform to improve functional healthy ageing and evaluate same in European participants.
We applied for this project because it was a fantastic opportunity to take an evidence-based and effective programme developed and used extensively in Ireland and adapt it via multi partner collaboration to make it available, suitable and effective on a wide scale for middle-aged and older adults across Europe. We conducted a needs analysis in middle-aged and older adults (direct target group) in Europe regarding digital physical activity and health programmes. We identified a need for age and ability specific exercise programmes, that were easy to follow, safe to do for people who have clinical conditions, short in duration (30 minutes), multimodal in focus (strength, balance, flexibility, mobility and fitness), delivered by experts and freely available on-demand with minimal equipment required. AgeWell was designed with this in mind and proved to be well liked by users and effective in improving outcome indicators of health, wellbeing and functional ability in addition to health knowledge in our direct target group. We took the same approach with fitness professionals in Europe (our indirect target group) and developed AgeWell PRO based on the findings. and also fitness professionals who work with these adults.