Thank you for recognizing the Canadian Centre for Activity and Aging as a national leader in the area of physical activity and aging. For those of you who are not familiar with the Canadian Centre for Activity and Aging, we are a national centre located in London, Ontario, at the University of Western Ontario. Our mandate is to conduct research in the area of physical activity and aging, and then to develop model programs and leadership training programs that support the research we've learned in order to help older people maintain as much of their functional ability as possible. The work we do is geared to both very well older adults living in the community and frail older adults living in a variety of different care facilities.
I think it's important for us to let you know that this is a wonderful opportunity for us to have a discussion with the members of this committee and to talk about the value of physical activity programming as an intervention to help many of the ill effects of aging that many of the veterans and older adults experience as they get older and have various levels of functional decline.
Like Mark, I took note of Keeping the Promise and the guide to access Veteran Affairs Canada health benefits and the VIP program. What I thought was quite interesting--I learned as I read--was that the VIP program in place and many of the services provided to the veterans are based on their veterans status as compared to their actual level of need. So I think there has to be better integration based on the service delivery model, on what the actual veteran needs, not so much based on their age and/or status but on their functional needs. I'm sure many of you can think of a variety of different older people who are younger than others and yet not as functionally capable.
I've noted in the documents as well the importance of physical activity and the need for increased and improved community-based programming. That was emphasized actually in both documents, and I thought that was encouraging.
When we were coming to Ottawa, I was trying to think of specific community-based interventions that assist veterans to maintain their functional mobility in the variety of communities I've worked in throughout the country. I couldn't really come up with many of these type of programs. I think that's a direction that the document indicates the group wants to move forward in, and yet we have to realize that many of these older people want to age in place. We need to ensure that programs and services are delivered to them within the communities they live in. The wonderful thing as well is that the work you're doing helps not only veterans but older adults in general.
Much of the work we do beyond the research phase of it is not funded. It ends up that many older people who are able to financially pay for programs and services that are evidence-based can attend those programs and services if they're up and running in their various communities. There are a couple of challenges here. In some communities, the funds don't exist to get these evidence-based programs in place. The other challenge is that some of the veterans might not qualify for the VIP funding or may not have the funds to offset these costs.
I can share with you an example of a veteran I know through our centre, where we have over 420 older people who access our programs and services. This veteran had been taking part in a chronic obstructive lung disease program for about ten years. The program was physician governed and monitored, and was run out of a hospital in London, Ontario. The hospital felt that this program could be run within a community model setting, and looked to the Canadian Centre for Activity and Aging, based on the expertise we had in delivering evidence-based programs, to implement this program.
Having said that, there are direct costs associated with taking part in a variety of functional mobility programs to first of all try to prevent functional decline; secondly, if a fall has happened or something else, to try to help these people recover--the rehabilitation phase of functional mobility programming; and thirdly, if rehab has taken place, to help these people maintain their functional gains in the long term, so that they can benefit from the purposeful activities that those programs have helped them be able to take part in.
This person was not aware of the level of funding that might be available through the VIP to access the service, and we were not in a position to be able to offer this service to this individual at no cost. Discussions began in early August, and to make a long story short, the person finally received funding through the VIP in middle to late December. I feel that timeframe is too long, and the older person didn't know how to navigate the system in order to benefit from these health promotion initiatives, even though they're indicated in the document. I wonder how aware these veterans are of these health promotion initiatives as compared to perhaps rehab initiatives after an incident such as a fall has happened. So it's really looking at how we can help prevent further functional decline in the long term.
I'm sure my brief has been circulated along with Mark's. I just want to address a couple of recommendations based on some of the points I've mentioned.
There's a lot of information and a lot of research that has been done to explain the benefits of physical activity for older people. If you're not aware of that information, when you had the Health Canada representatives speak to your standing committee, they would have highlighted Canada's Physical Activity Guide to Healthy Active Living for Older Adults. It's a great document. It summarizes briefly the importance of physical activity programming for older adults.
At this point, I think the emphasis really should be on taking a look at the vast amount of information out there, the research that has been published--and a lot of it being Canadian research--and looking at how we can translate that information into effective and accountable functional mobility programs for older adults and veterans, and to ensure that these programs are evidence-based and outcome-based.
What I mean by outcome-based is we don't feel it's good enough just to set up physical activity programs throughout the country for a variety of veterans and older people in general. It's essential that these programs are outcome-based, and we know what it is we're trying to measure and what risk factors they present, so that appropriate programs can be put in place to prevent furthering those risk factors.
There are a few key words: evidence-based programming, outcome-based programming, programming in place in a variety of communities throughout our country, and ensuring that many of these programs can be delivered within the home care infrastructure--so really supporting aging at home.
It's essential to develop cost-effective physical activity model programs for veterans and older adults based on research and led by competent leaders to ensure that funding and support for these programs in various communities is provided where older adults reside and ensure that physical activity programs, as I mentioned, are outcome-based, community-based, and foster aging at home.
As well, to help our older adults and veterans living in a variety of different care facilities throughout our country, it's important to note that these types of programs should also be in place in those types of facilities. Regardless of your age, it's always possible to maintain your functional mobility. We know that when we start losing functional gains, they're not necessarily due exclusively to aging, but inactivity plays a huge role.
The second recommendation is that if implemented as part of the routine primary care of veterans and older adults, the evidence demonstrates that physical activity has the potential to prevent functional decline and keep more people living at home longer with an improved quality of life. There are several cost savings later on, which we can talk about further.
Third is to provide assistance to veterans to navigate the health care pathway, so they're informed of the services available to them. From the experiences I've had with three veterans in particular, they didn't know what they didn't know. They didn't know these services were available to them, because they were health promotion services, as compared to rehab services. So it's important to make accessible evidence-based health promotion programs through the veterans independence program, and not solely rehab programs or programs based on veteran status but also based on their functional needs.
In closing, I think the key here is to look at the programs that already exist. Many of us have done research to develop these programs and to help them be implemented in a variety of communities so we can start the piloting of these programs to have an actual impact on the functional lives of these veterans and to help them become engaged in living independently as long as possible.
Thank you.