The study team, including researchers, community stakeholders and older-adult citizens, will co-design, implement and evaluate an innovative community-based intervention with the goal of improved physical and community mobility, nutrition, and social participation in older adults.

Getting out socially and moving about physically can help maintain independence and quality of life for older adults. Community programs designed to support these activities may be highly effective, but many older adults face barriers accessing them.

An experience-based co-design approach will be used to determine features of the EMBOLDEN intervention, focusing on the experiences of older adults engaging with community-based health and social services to promote physical mobility and social participation. Experience-based co-design is a research approach that brings together end-users and key stakeholders to improve programs and services. This type of research supports better alignment of research programs with existing community programs, ensures existing assets can be leveraged, and leads to applicable and appropriately contextualized experiences for older adults.

The interdisciplinary research team, from areas such as nursing, kinesiology, medicine, and rehabilitation science, will engage older adult citizens and health and social service providers to explore existing community assets and needs, as well as the enablers and barriers faced by older adults to engage in community-based programs. This will help to identify priority features to include in the community-based program to promote mobility among older adults. Engaging public and community stakeholders in the co-design of the EMBOLDEN intervention will create a feasible and acceptable approach to address community needs and obtain a deeper understanding of priority design features. This engagement will also lead to achievement of the proposed objectives and potential for real-world impact. Following the EMBOLDEN intervention co-design, a pragmatic mixed method randomized controlled trial will evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the EMBOLDEN intervention.

The overall goal of the research program is to promote physical and community mobility of older adults who experience difficulties participating in community programs and reside in communities of high health inequity. Building on existing best practices and evidence, researchers together with older-adult citizens and community service providers will co-design an innovative community-based program to promote mobility amongst community-dwelling older adults. Evidence of feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of the program will provide a foundation to assess the potential to sustain the program and test it in other communities.