Wayfinding, mobility, and technology for an aging society

Abstract

This chapter, written from a public health and technology perspective, addresses limited or impaired mobility, which is common in adults“particularly older adults”and adversely associated with health, well-being, and function. Little attention has been given to problems with community wayfinding, including both individual characteristics (such as reduced lower-body strength, vision impairment, and cognitive deficits) and environmental characteristics (such as broken sidewalks, poor lighting, and heavy automobile traffic) and their potential impact on older adult mobility. Given that improving mobility is a key foundation block for any comprehensive program to enhance the health and well-being of older adults, the chapter explores the potential of current and emerging personal wayfinding technologies to improve wayfinding and enhance mobility. It identifies the relative lack of and need to build an evidence base that includes public health outcomes. The RE-AIM (Reach, Efficacy/Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance) framework, widely employed in public health to foster effective translation of research to practice, is proposed as a means to assess personal wayfinding technologies. First, questions underlying RE-AIM components are explored for utility in assessing the current status of a given technology. Second, the framework is applied in a manner closer to its original intent to examine the translation and dissemination of a specific technology. Finally, the chapter explores some future directions in this rapidly expanding field.