Research on older voluntarism reveals important insights into how rural communities are coping with the nuances of rural ageing. An emergent insight is how the interconnections between older rural volunteers and ageing rural places create spaces of conflict and contestation. To shed further light on how these ‘contested spaces of older voluntarism’ are constituted and what they mean for ageing in rural environments, a case study of volunteer-based programs in rural Ontario, Canada was conducted. Focus group discussions and interviews with more than 50 volunteers and program administrators elicit novel insights into how the perspectives, experiences and contributions of volunteers and administrators contribute to understanding dimensions of responsibility, ageing and the life course, territoriality, privilege and complexity. The findings also reveal how the tensions amongst volunteers, the programs they support and the communities in which the live influence the sustainability of rural older voluntarism and rural ageing at multiple levels.

Hospital volunteer programs offer older adults opportunities for meaningful engagement while supporting healthcare delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted these programs, yet little is known about older hospital volunteers' experiences during and after this period. This study explores older hospital volunteers' experiences during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. A qualitative case study of the Peterborough Regional Health Centre's volunteer program was conducted between September and November 2024. Nineteen older volunteers participated in semi-structured one-on-one interviews or focus group discussions. Data were collected in two phases and thematically analyzed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive six-phase framework. The analysis generated four interconnected themes: benefits of volunteering during the pandemic, drivers of volunteer motivation, challenges of volunteering during the pandemic, and measures to sustain the volunteer program post-pandemic. The findings indicate that hospital volunteering continues to provide meaningful benefits for older adults, including purpose and social reconnection, while also revealing challenges that may affect sustained engagement in a post-pandemic context. Overall, the study highlights how older adults' volunteering experiences are shaped by both enduring motivations and the disruptions and adaptations associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Targeted strategies that enhance volunteer involvement in decision-making and strengthen health and safety measures may support the sustainability of hospital volunteer programs in the post-pandemic context.

Background Engagement with the arts is advocated to reduce stigma and to increase the social inclusion of people living with dementia since the arts powerfully support non-verbal communication, affect and the opportunity to participate in activities that are meaningful to self and others. An example is Sharing Dance Older Adults (SDOA), an innovative, community dance programme that is offered by Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS) intended to support social inclusion by making dance accessible to older adults with a range of physical and cognitive abilities, including people living with dementia. Despite the benefits that SDOA offers people living with dementia and their carers, individuals from historically excluded populations, and more specifically those from racialised groups, have had only limited engagement with the programme. This study thus aims to co-develop with dance artists in the three largest racialised communities in Canada (Black, Chinese and South Asian) culturally relevant SDOA-informed dance opportunities for people living with dementia. Methods and analysis This 3-year study (2024–2027) is a multiple-case and intrinsic-case study design informed by critical participatory action research and the Critical Realism and the Arts Research Utilisation Model. For each of the three racialised communities, implementation and data collection will develop across five phases (preimplementation of professional development for dance artists; implementation of professional development for dance artists; postimplementation of professional development for dance artists; implementation of dance programming; and postimplementation of dance programming). Drawing on organisational partnerships in two Canadian provinces for three racialised communities, we plan to recruit older adults living with/without dementia who will attend the dance programming (n=90), formal/informal carers such as nurses and family (n=30), site managers such as directors of care (n=15), dance artists from the case communities (n=15) and NBS dance trainers who teach SDOA (n=2). Data collection strategies include: semistructured e-diary entries; active interviews; and video recordings of dance classes. All e-diary entries, transcriptions of interviews and video clips selected for full verbatim transcription will be analysed concurrently and recursively, using standard thematic analysis techniques. Ethics and dissemination All five phases of this study have been approved by the Clinical Trials Ontario (CTO Project ID: 4997, 11 June 2026), which is a streamlined ethics review system for multisite studies. All participants will provide written informed consent before taking part in the study. The outcomes will be shared through articles published in journals, presentations at academic and professional conferences, arts-based community events and other knowledge mobilisation forums that include all partners and collaborators.

Drawing together key developments in feminist sociology, emotional geographies and critical rural gerontology, we address recent calls within research and policy to continue to build our understanding of the invisible work involved in navigating ageing and care at home in rural contexts. We do so by investigating taken for granted assumptions about rurality and health work in familial care as well as the home as a complex care environment. We use the example of family carers of rural adults in New Brunswick, Canada to shed light on the invisible health work required to maintain the home as a site of care and manage disrupted meanings of home space and family relationships. Findings suggest that structural forces like government policies and income inequality create and perpetuate new forms of health work for family carers. Rural insights into advancing a critical perspective on gendered, familial care providers and their relationship to the care environment are discussed in order to better understand the impact of imposing long-term care policy on domestic relationships and places.

INTRODUCTION:Prior research has identified that older rural patients and their families view preparation for detecting and responding to worsening health after a hospital stay as their most pressing unmet need, and perceive an evidence-based warning signs intervention that prepares them to do so as highly likely to meet this need. Yet, little is known about healthcare professionals' perspectives about potential barriers and facilitators to implementing warning signs interventions, especially in rural communities. AIM:This study aimed to identify potential barriers and facilitators to healthcare professionals' provision of a warning signs intervention in rural communities. MATERIALS AND METHODS:In this qualitative descriptive study, we examined healthcare professionals' perspectives on potential barriers and facilitators to providing a warning signs intervention. A purposive, criterion-based sample of healthcare professionals, stratified by professional designation (three strata - nurses, physicians, and allied healthcare professionals) who provide health care to rural dwellers in Ontario, Canada participated in semi-structured telephone focus-group discussions or 1:1 interviews on barriers and facilitators to delivering the intervention. Data were analyzed using conventional qualitative content analysis. RESULTS:Twenty-seven healthcare professionals participated in focus groups and 15 in 1:1 interviews for a total of 42 healthcare professionals. Analysis by healthcare professional stratum revealed nine categories of barriers and facilitators: material resources; human resources; healthcare professional communication; healthcare professional knowledge and skill; healthcare professional buy-in; context of rural practice; patient- and family-specific characteristics; risks and liabilities; and timing of intervention delivery. Seven of these categories converged across healthcare professional strata. However, the reasons why different healthcare professional strata perceived the categories as important, and the ways in which they saw them functioning as barriers and facilitators, varied. Our findings shed light on barriers and facilitators that should be considered to ensure successful implementation of the intervention in rural communities. DISCUSSION:This study adds to the limited research on rural healthcare professionals' perspectives on barriers and facilitators to delivering a warning signs intervention.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the relationship between older adults and digital technology became complicated. Prior to the pandemic, some older adults may have faced a double exclusion due to a lack of digital literacy and social interaction, and the pandemic-imposed transition to nearly all aspects of life being online magnified the requirement for people to be increasingly digitally literate. This paper presents an exploratory analysis to understand how the increased online nature of the world during the pandemic may have impacted older adults' relationship with digital technology by expanding on a prior study of older adults who, pre-pandemic, self-identified as occasional or non-users of digital technology. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 12 of these people during the pandemic. Our findings demonstrate the ways that their risk of precarity became heightened and how they began to use digital technology more frequently, strengthening and applying their digital literacy skills to remain virtually connected with friends and family. Further, the paper advances the concept of a triple exclusion for older adults who are non-users of digital technology and describes how digital literacy and remaining virtually connected can work in tandem, helping older adults to remain included in society.

BACKGROUND:Establishing an effective continuum of care is a pivotal part of providing support for older populations. In contemporary practice; however, a subset of older adults experience delayed entry and/or are denied access to appropriate care. While previously incarcerated older adults often face barriers to accessing health care services to support community reintegration, there has been limited research on their transitions into long-term care. Exploring these transitions, we aim to highlight the challenges of securing long-term care services for previously incarcerated older adults and shed light on the contextual landscape that reinforces the inequitable care of marginalized older populations across the care continuum.METHODS:We performed a case study of a Community Residential Facility (CRF) for previously incarcerated older adults which leverages best practices in transitional care interventions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with CRF staff and community stakeholders to determine the challenges and barriers of this population when reintegrating back into the community. A secondary thematic analysis was conducted to specifically examine the challenges of accessing long-term care. A code manual representing the project themes (e.g., access to care, long-term care, inequitable experiences) was tested and revised, following an iterative collaborative qualitative analysis (ICQA) process.RESULTS:The findings indicate that previously incarcerated older adults experience delayed access and/or are denied entry into long-term care due to stigma and a culture of risk that overshadow the admissions process. These circumstances combined with few available long-term care options and the prominence of complex populations already in long-term care contribute to the inequitable access barriers of previously incarcerated older adults seeking entry into long-term care.CONCLUSIONS:We emphasize the many strengths of utilizing transitional care interventions to support previously incarcerated older adults as they transition into long-term care including: 1) education & training, 2) advocacy, and 3) a shared responsibility of care. On the other hand, we underscore that more work is needed to redress the layered bureaucracy of long-term care admissions processes, the lack of long-term care options and the barriers imposed by restrictive long-term care eligibility criteria that sustain the inequitable care of marginalized older populations.

Introduction People with non-severe haemophilia appear to be under-treated in many countries, and this may lead to joint damage and worsen quality of life. Aim To review literature for clotting factor replacement prophylaxis in people with non-severe haemophilia A and B (HA/HB) in relation to long-term outcomes to support clinical decision-making. Methods A targeted literature search was performed to identify studies published between 2000 and 2021 that included prophylaxis in people with non-severe HA/HB and long-term outcomes, including annualized bleeding rates, joint health and quality of life. Results Although eligible articles included 2737 and 2272 people with mild or moderate HA, respectively, only 22% (n = 609) and 29% (n = 668) reported treatment regimens. A total of 549 people with moderate HA were treated with factor replacement prophylaxis and were from high-income countries. On the contrary, nearly all people with mild HA received desmopressin (n = 599). Details of treatment regimens for women with haemophilia and people with HB were sparse. Three studies provided long-term outcomes for people with moderate haemophilia who received prophylaxis with factor concentrate, supporting early prophylaxis in people with a frequent bleeding phenotype regardless of their endogenous clotting factor level to preserve joint health. Conclusion There remain large knowledge gaps when considering how to provide optimal treatment for people with non-severe haemophilia. Nonetheless, there is a strong rationale that prophylaxis should be considered early in life according to similar strategies as for severe haemophilia for those with a frequent severe bleeding phenotype.