BCNAR Annual Conference 2008

Conference Overview

The World Health Organization has adopted the term “active aging” as a vital health objective for middle-aged and older adults. This ideal lifestyle involves optimizing opportunities for health, social participation and security in order to enhance the quality of life as people age. An important component of active aging is increasing or maintaining healthy levels of physical activity. This is particularly important today given that approximately 51% of Canadians aged 55-64 and 54% of those aged 65 and over are inactive according to Statistics Canada. British Columbians boast the highest levels of physical activity, but there is still room for improvement.

The upcoming 2010 Olympic Games provide a number of timely opportunities to improve the level of physical activity of older adults in our province and to significantly raise the overall level of population health. To realize these opportunities, it will be necessary to develop, plan, implement, and evaluate these efforts to produce a legacy for future Olympic events and for future generations of British Columbians.

Conference Objectives

• Provide a forum for researchers, community groups and key stakeholders interested in 2010 Olympic activities to discuss opportunities for activity programs
• Provide a forum to discuss the current work being done on methods of analysing the impact of large sporting events on population health characteristics
• Identify testable research questions within thematic areas
• Identify potential research teams / team leaders for the purpose of developing viable research proposals
• Showcase local and national initiatives to promote and foster active aging
• Produce draft evaluation frameworks for each of the themes
• Inform participants of funding and collaborative opportunities

Event Materials: 

BCNAR 2008 Annual Conference Brochure

Event Materials: 

BCNAR 2008 Annual Conference Report