[Preventive Home Visits As an Intervention to Promote the Health of Older People].

This discussion paper examines preventive home visits (PHVs) as low-threshold, outreach-based counselling and support services aimed at promoting the health of older people. PHVs can help to identify risks such as the risk of falls, social isolation or nutritional deficiencies at an early stage, strengthen health and care literacy, and support independent living in the home environment. In Germany, there is a growing number of projects whose approaches differ significantly in terms of target groups, access routes, the qualifications of visiting staff, the range of services, evaluation, organisational structure and funding. The analysis shows that PHVs are situated at the interface between local authority support for older people, the health service and long-term care. A key challenge lies in the long-term funding and sustainability of services that have so far often been organised on a project basis. Sustainable implementation requires conceptual clarification, robust evaluations and cross-sectoral structural and funding models. The prevention of the need for long-term care should be given greater focus in health policy and be more firmly embedded within the statutory health and long-term care insurance systems.