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The purpose of this research is to examine a downstream social marketing program that slows the typical decline in functional fitness and independence of adults over 55 with particular attention to the ROI and the efficiency of the program.

Within subjects quasi-experimental design.

The ExerStart program is cost-efficient and effective delivering an ROI of 33 per cent. The participants of the ExerStart social marketing program significantly improved functional fitness. Further, this program demonstrates that this result may be achieved with just four exercises rather than six.

A successful, cost-effective, high-retention social marketing program is outlined for social marketers who aim to increase the functional fitness and independence of adults over 55 years.

Two societal benefits, the first is that it provides direction about how to efficiently prolong the independence of adults over 55 years, and the second is that it decreases pressure and costs on the healthcare system. This may be useful for policy makers and social marketers alike.

The authors contribute to the literature in two important ways. First, this paper details a cost-effective intervention that improves the physical fitness of a significant and growing portion of the community and suggests additional considerations for future ROI calculations. Second, this paper contributes methodologically by introducing the senior fitness test (a new criterion-referenced clinically relevant physical fitness standard specifically developed for seniors).

Perspectives on gender, gender expression, sexuality identity, and sexual orientation differ within and between generations given the great extent to which these concepts are embedded within social, cultural, and historical context. Across contexts, questions of authenticity are critical. This research compares generational perspectives about authenticity, gender and gender-related constructs, and sexuality. Through semi-structured interviews with a nonprobability, purposive sample of heterosexual and LGBTQ younger (aged 18–22) and older (aged 65+) adults, how a sense of authenticity is experienced and the degree to which individuals experience authenticity around sexual and gender identities are compared. Data were analyzed using the constant comparison method of analysis, and results indicate that while younger adult respondents held expansive terminology and knowledge related to sexual and gender identities, older adult participants lacked such fluidity, and that lack was an inhibiting factor in older adults being able to name and embody their authentic sexual selves. In conclusion, both position in one’s life course (age) and one’s generational cohort (historical, cultural, and social context) influence how individuals experience authenticity around gender and sexual identities.

This paper aims to identify both the traditional and novel forms of marketing behind New Zealand Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern’s landslide victory in the 2020 New Zealand General Election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research analysed both qualitative and quantitative data, including over 70 primary sources, the perspectives of practitioners, polling and data from surveys with over 450,000 respondents. The qualitative data was analysed interpretively against established theoretical concepts, whereas the quantitative data was analysed through descriptive statistics.

This research found that COVID-19 drastically changed what the public prioritised, allowing Ardern and Labour to position themselves as guardians of government stability, while camouflaging previous delivery failures. Labour also used a more emergent market-oriented and “polite” populist political marketing strategy.

While the survey data used is not a perfect sample of the population, it is the largest public opinion survey in New Zealand and, given its convergence with other sources, provides valuable insights into political marketing during a crisis more broadly.

This research reinforces marketing’s most important aspect; the market should drive action. How decision makers respond to the market should depend on the environment. Thus, up-to-date market research becomes even more important during a crisis, as the environment changes rapidly. This leaves prior assumptions obsolete and implies strategy needs to be adaptive. Additionally, greater public attention provides governing leaders with the opportunity to present a more well-rounded leadership image.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to look at marketing while in government and election campaigning in the context of successful management of a global pandemic.

Elder abuse has come to be recognized as any act of both commission or omission that causes harm or loss to elderly people. This can include active or passive neglect, violence, sexual or emotional abuse, various kinds of theft, and deprivation of the person’s human rights. Elder abuse has many causes. The Hastings and Prince Edward Council on Aging developed an Elder Abuse Community Response Protocol to help address this problem.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a “new orthodoxy” in explaining homelessness had emerged in the field of homeless research. Combining structural and individual factors, the consensus is that people with personal problems are more vulnerable than others to the structural conditions of becoming homeless.

Drawing on a three-year ethnographic study of older homeless people (aged 50 years and above) in Singapore, this chapter highlights three issues with this new orthodoxy. The first is the continued reliance on a strict dichotomy of structural and individual factors. This strict dichotomy does not reflect the realities in people’s lives. The “individual vulnerabilities” of older people in the study had structural dimensions that must be considered as well. The second is the framing of individual vulnerabilities as individual pathologies. This way of framing homelessness results in the assumption that there is something deficient with all people who are homeless that requires correction. Such a view is encapsulated in the compulsory institutionalisation and rehabilitation of rough sleepers in Singapore. The final and most fundamental issue is the problematic association of individual vulnerabilities with one’s heightened risk of becoming homeless. Older people in the study did not become homeless solely because they had more personal problems or issues than others. Rather, multiple pathways (or life events) that encompass both structural and individual factors weakened their ability to draw resources from work, family and friends and government assistance. Homelessness occurred when older people in the study ran out of all these three options.

EVERY librarian in his inmost heart dislikes newspapers. He regards them as bad literature; attractors of undesirable readers; a drain upon the limited resources of the library; and a target against which the detractors of public libraries are constantly battering. From the standpoint of the librarian, newspapers are the most expensive and least productive articles stocked by a library, and their lavish provision is, perhaps, the most costly method of purchasing waste‐paper ever devised. Pressure of circumstances and local conditions combine, however, to muzzle the average librarian, and the consequence is that a perfectly honest and outspoken discussion of the newspaper question is very rarely seen. In these circumstances, an attempt to marshal the arguments for and against the newspaper, together with some account of a successful practical experiment at limitation, may prove interesting to readers of this magazine.

Caring in Later Life is a review of the needs and roles of older carers (Milne et al, 2001). It brings together a wide‐ranging review of academic and policy literature with an original meta‐analysis of the 1995 General Household Survey (OPCS, 1995). This paper focuses on the findings of the GHS analysis. The picture of older carers that emerges is significantly different from that of carers overall.It is clear that older carers constitute a large and growing number of the carers and represent an increasingly large proportion of the total number of UK carers. They can be distinguished from other groups of carers in a number of ways: older carers are more likely to live with the person they care for, caring is likely to take place within the context of a long term relationship, dementia is a dominant feature and carers are more likely to be involved in intimate and personal care. Many also have health problems of their own. The analysis confirms a distinction between older carers who offer support on a co‐resident basis and those who are extra resident. There is clearly a high level of devotion to caring amongst many co‐resident carers, with many providing intensive care over long periods of time with little or no support from services. Most of these carers are spouses. The authors suggest that more should and can be done by policy and services to improve the health and quality of life of older carers.

The black and ethnic minority (BME) elderly population in England and Wales is increasing. As dementia is an age‐related disorder and the prevalence of depression in old age is high, the absolute number of cases of dementia and depression will increase among BME elders. This has implications for the development and delivery of old age psychiatry services (OAPSs) for BME elders. Demographic data pertaining to the elderly from BME groups in the 2001 population census were analysed in detail to evaluate the implications for development and delivery of OAPSs for BME elders. The demographic changes identified have important future implications for the development and delivery of OAPSs for BME elders. Unless they are addressed systematically, BME elders will continue to harbour untreated, hidden psychiatric morbidity. Strategies to ensure that this vulnerable group of elderly are identified and provided with accessible, acceptable and culturally sensitive OAPSs should be developed.

The importance of developing intermediate care options for older people is gaining increasing prominence in the UK with the promotion of new health and social care partnerships. Consequent changes in practice and values are demanded from staff. An action research approach provides a process of generating information linked to dialogues which facilitate such changes. This article draws on a case study of nursing staff working with older people in a newly‐defined rehabilitation setting in a Welsh community hospital. The action research cycle reported, focused on a series of collaborative interventions aimed at bringing about such changes in thinking and practice from a ‘doing for’ to an ‘enabling’ rehabilitative style of nursing. Three questionnaires and a round of group interviews were successively undertaken with a group of 49 staff, with planning and discussion sessions taking place between each data collection round. The process highlighted differing assumptions between different grades of nursing staff and between nurses and therapists about the nature of the rehabilitative process and how far it could be integrated with nursing care. The article discusses how the action research process supported a shared change in perspective that progress needed to be made to work in an integrated rehabilitative way. Participative approaches, such as action research, should be drawn on if the positive and cost‐effective benefits of rehabilitation for older people are to be more actively realised.