Background

One of the most important changes in Europe over the last 50 years has been the rapid increase in the number of people living into their 70s, 80s and beyond. Today the people of 75 years old and over form 7.5% of the overall European population, but in 30 years this percentage will rise to 14.4%. Most of those ageing people will have some physical or mental disability, regardless the fact if they acquired this disability at birth or obtained it later in life or just it happened as a consequence of the normal process of ageing. The “Eurostat” data estimate that by the end of 2040 the severely impaired adults will be 6.5% of the total population in Europe, or 24.5 million people.

The medical model says that health is the absence of disease. But by age 60, most older adults have been touched by some disease or disability. Recently, the traditional disability model has changed to agree with the suggestion that disability develops not only from disease but also from lifestyle choices.

Ageing is a process that often affects and restricts the people who are growing old, on physical, psychological and social level. Numerous research projects have demonstrated that the benefits of planned physical activities for health for elderly are indisputable. As older adults are the fastest growing age group, attention needs to be given to them as a special population in the area of exercise and sport. Qualified professionals in the area of physical activity for the elderly have to be prepared now, so they can meet the new demands of the future.

An additional feature to the global demographic picture is one special and also quickly growing group of citizens, those with congenital or long term disabilities who live much longer nowadays due to the increased quality of life and advanced medical care. For this specific group the need of physical activity is of extreme importance. But because of the fact that this group didn’t exist some years ago, there is a complete lack of knowledge and respectively professionals prepared to meet the needs of this population.

Another very important but very often neglected aspect is the cost of Physical Inactivity. The cost of Physical inactivity is a sum of Direct costs (medical care, compensations, lost productivity), Indirect costs (lost opportunities, longer rehabilitation times, drug reactions, additional usage of medical services), Cost drivers (faster ageing population, inflation) and Cost accelerators (new technologies, increased incidence of chronic and new diseases and disabilities). So the best way to diminish the costs of physical inactivity is to prepare specialists who will deal with this problem.

For the purposes of this project we will consider under the term “elderly” the following group of persons: all ageing adults in a relevantly good physical and mental state; all ageing adults with a disability, acquired due to the process of ageing; and all persons with congenital or long term disability who are reaching older age.

The academic subject area is Adapted Physical Activity (APA). Many times for shortness’ we will use just the term physical activity, but we always mean APA with respect to the “specialness” of the beneficiary ageing population.