• Wolfgang von Renteln-Kruse, Lilli Neumann, Dominic Vinyard, Stefan Golgert, Ulrich Thiem, and Ulrike Dapp.
• Albertinen-Haus - Zentrum für Geriatrie und Gerontologie, Wissenschaftliche Einrichtung an der Universität Hamburg.
• Dtsch. Med. Wochenschr. 2022 Nov 1; 147 (23): e116e127e116-e127.

BackgroundThe growing need of nursing care as life expectancy increases is a problem. The Netzwerk AktivGesund (NWGA) tries to change this development in a positive way. In a pilot region of the city of Hamburg, persons 70 years and older were invited by their health insurance companies to participate in the NWGA supportive network. Results of the acceptance analysis are described here.MethodsIn order to focus on persons at risk of need for help functional competence was assessed by using the LUCAS functional ability index (selfreport questionnaire). In an explorative way, participants, refusers, persons interested (excluded due to high functional competence), and non-responders were compared in a retrospective observational study. Sociodemographic and routine data were used as ICD diagnoses from hospitalisations, number of contacts to physicians and level of need of nursing care during the 12 months before recruitment.ResultsThere were 962 participants (7.4 %), 948 refusers (7.2 %), 2437 persons with interest (18.6 %) and 8753 non-responders (66.8 %) from the 13 100 persons contacted by mail. The sociodemographic factors differed between these groups. ICDs typical of older patients and ICD codes of functional impairment from the 5422 hospital stays showed different frequencies. Persons with interest had nearly no need of nursing care and the lowest level of morbidity.ConclusionsThe results show that impairments of motoric and cognitive functions, in particular, and sociodemographic factors have impact on the acceptance of the NWGA. The recruitment for participation should be improved using approaches that are differentiated, respectively. Awareness of functional impairment as disease sequelae and pacemaker of need of nursing care, in general, might facilitate health promotion and prevention in older persons. An interest in preventative activities was remarkably frequent among the persons 70 years and older.The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commecial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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