Out-of-Home Activities and Health in Older Adults: A Scoping Review.
Shlomit Rotenberg, Heather Fritz, Tracy Chippendale and 2 others
PMID 34148393WHAT IT FOUND
Research on older adults leaving home focuses heavily on social and leisure activities.
It rarely measures the quality of the experience, such as autonomy or meaning. Clinicians should not assume simply going out improves health; what people do and how they feel matters.
Key findings
01The review mapped existing literature but explicitly did not synthesize evidence on whether out-of-home activities effectively improve health outcomes.
02Most studies examined social and leisure activities, but very few assessed the subjective quality of the activity, such as autonomy or personal meaning.
03The literature is dominated by studies from East Asia, raising questions about generalizability to Western populations due to cultural differences in why people leave home.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The review excluded qualitative studies, which may have provided insight into why certain activities are health-promoting. Only English-language articles were included, potentially biasing the dataset. The heavy concentration of studies from East Asia limits generalizability to Western populations, where reasons for leaving home differ (e.g., shopping vs. exercise). The review did not assess the quality or risk of bias of the included studies, as is typical for scoping reviews. Most included studies used simple binary measures (yes/no) for activity participation, failing to capture nuance.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this paper as evidence that out-of-home activities improve health. The authors explicitly state they did not synthesize findings on effectiveness. The paper maps what has been studied, not what works. Additionally, the dominance of East Asian studies means findings may not apply to patients in other cultural contexts who leave home for different reasons.