Development and Application of Agro-Healing Program to Promote Cognitive Health of the Elderly

Background and objective: This study aimed to develop agro-healing program to enable the elderly to improve cognitive health, and to determine impacts on cognitive, emotional, and physical function through applying the program to seniors at welfare facilities.Methods: The agro-healing program was developed in consultation with experts on material selection, activity types, physical exercises, and evaluation methods. The program was conducted for seniors who used Jeonju Y Senior Welfare Center from May to August 2022. The total of 19 participants in the program were divided into 9 in the control group and 10 in the experimental group.A agro-healing program with 12 activities was given to the experimental group. As a pre- and post-test, the results of a cognitive screening test, short form of geriatric depression scale, and physical fitness test for the elderly were compared. For the experimental group, their activity preference was surveyed. The results were analyzed using SAS 9.4.Results: The agro-healing program to promote cognitive health did not show significant results in terms of differences in mean scores for cognitive, emotional, and physical area between the control and experimental groups in the pre- and post-test. However, through this study, it was found that the subjects preferred interesting activities with work stages using plants.Conclusion: A cognitive health promotion program for the elderly was developed and applied. Although the effectiveness of program was not proven, it is expected that activities preferred by the elderly can be used as basic data in agro-healing programs for the cognitive health of the elderly.