Outdoor-Based Care and Support Programs for Community-Dwelling People Living with Dementia and Their Care Partners: A Scoping Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background/Objectives: How to best assist people living with dementia (PLWD) and their care partners to maximize quality of life and quality of living, through appropriate and effective non-pharmaceutical approaches, remains a focus of dementia societies and organizations worldwide. This scoping review explored the types, opportunities, benefits and challenges of outdoor-based care and support programs for community-dwelling PLWD and their care partners. Methods: The methodological framework proposed by Arksey & O’Malley (2005) and modified by Levac et al. (2010) was followed. Four research databases were searched from January 2000 to November 2024; 2817 articles were retrieved and 20 met inclusion criteria and underwent data extraction. Results: Program types included the following: nature-based, care farm, green care farm, and farm-based dementia care programs, representing more than half of the included articles; health walks; and outdoor horticulture/garden/gardening programs. The number of PLWD participants ranged from 4 to 136. The total number of care partner participants was 151 and the total number of service provider participants was 87. The essence of, and connections with, nature and the outdoors had notable relevance and value for PLWD. Reported benefits, assessed quantitatively and qualitatively, were numerous and those in the social domain were reported most often. Identified challenges and barriers were related to risks and safety and program development, and implementation and delivery. Conclusions: The noteworthy potential of outdoor-based care and support programs to promote and enhance the quality of life and quality of living of community-dwelling PLWD and their care partners was elucidated. As most PLWD prefer to, and do, continue to reside in their homes, including those with advancing symptoms, the findings have significant relevance and implications for real-world practice and policy. Future research addressing current gaps will strengthen this growing field of dementia research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.038 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.013 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".