Older Population Needs Assessment

Older Population Needs Assessment
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Older Population Needs Assessment
The vulnerable population prioritized in this discussion is older adults aged 70 years and above. In addition, the person in the community who participates in the care of these people and who will be interviewed to help in creating a needs assessment is a fitness instructor. A fitness instructor plays a vital role in ensuring that older adults remain healthy and that they can meet their fitness goals even as they grow older. Besides, people become fragile when they become old since their muscles and other parts of their bodies continue to weaken. For such individuals to stay physically active, they require personalized fitness training. As such, a thorough interview with a fitness instructor will significantly help in coming up with a needs assessment for the older population.
A needs assessment entails a systematic method used to review the health problems encountered by a specific population, in the scenario at hand, older adults, so that appropriate resources and priorities can be given to the chosen group of people to improve their health and decrease inequalities. In other terms, it is the process used to determine the cause and extent of a particular problem so that a proper solution can be implemented (Lawson, 2016). By collaborating with the fitness instructor, it will be easy to identify the issues that older adults encounter, affecting their physical health so that proper recommendations can be made. Notably, the process that will be followed to come up with a needs assessment of older adults includes identifying the need, determining the design of the needs assessment, gathering data, analyzing data, and providing appropriate feedback (Lawson, 2016). In this case, collecting data will be done by interviewing the fitness instructor. The fitness professional will share information about mobility problems faced by the older population. For instance, bone, joint, and muscle weakness due to old age might lead to physical inactivity in the chosen vulnerable population. On that note, fitness training can be the most recommendable thing to improve mobility and participation in other physical activities among older adults.
The fitness instructor interacts with the older population daily. The individual said that he uses a schedule to train older adults based on their needs. For example, he subdivides older adults into groups depending on their ages. Those between 70 to 76 years, 77 to 83 years, and over 83 years are grouped, respectively. The person communicates with the older adults respectfully when setting achievable goals to be met after every training session. Since older people are fragile, the physical activities performed are not intensive. Moreover, the fitness instructor offers personalized training, particularly for older individuals who are recovering from surgeries or with special needs. Notably, engaging in physical activities is vital since it improves a person’s immune system and facilitates a quick response to infections (Son et al., 2021). When it comes to older adults, physical ...