What Drove Program Participants to Initially Attend Congregate Meals? Socialization, Health, and Other Reasons

Abstract

The Congregate Nutrition Services support efforts to keep older Americans independent and engaged in their communities. We examined participants’ self-reported reasons for initially attending the congregate meals program and whether reasons differed by participant characteristics. Descriptive statistics and tests of differences were used to compare participants (n = 1,072). Individuals attended congregate meals for several reasons, with the top two being socialization (36.3%) and age- or health-related reasons (18.7%). Those attending for socialization were less likely to be lower income, have food insecurity, or live with 3+ ADL limitations while participants who first attended due to age or health-related reasons were more likely to be low income, food insecure, and from historically marginalized populations. Health and social service professionals and community organizations could expand data collection on older adults in their communities and partner with congregate meal providers to encourage participation for individuals with unmet nutritional, health, and socialization needs.

Keywords:

• Aging-in-community
• aging in place
• Community engagement
• congregate nutrition
• nutrition services program
• older adults
• Older Americans Act
• socialization

Take away points

• We believe this is the first study to examine the reasons congregate meal participants initially sought services using national data from active participants.

• We believe this study is the first to explicitly show that:

  • The predominate reason older adults are attending congregate meal programs is for socialization opportunities.

  • Reasons for participation in congregate meal programs varies demographic, socioeconomic and health characteristics.

  • Distinct subpopulations of congregate meal attendees exist, some who are less vulnerable and going for social engagement and some who are more vulnerable and attend due to a need.

• Though these data are prior to the 2020 COVID Public Health Emergency (data is from 2019), we discuss the findings within the context of nationwide site closures and modified reopening. We recommend congregate meal sites consider the various needs of subgroups of older adults in their community to ensure all can benefit from the program even with new site modifications (e.g., grab-and-go meals).

Acknowledgment

The opinions and views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors. They do not reflect the views of the Department of Health and Human Services, the contractor, the Administration of Community Living, or any other funding organization.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The Administration on Aging’s National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants (NSOAAP) questionnaires, data, and documentation are publicly available at https://agid.acl.gov/.

Notes

1 OAA Nutrition Programs are overseen by the Administration for Community Living (ACL). More information about these programs can be found via the ACL website: https://acl.gov/programs/health-wellness/nutrition-services

2 https://agid.acl.gov/DataFiles/Documents/NPS/2019SurveyDocumentation.pdf

3 Ibid.

4 Although logistic regression using these variables raises multicollinearity concerns, we ran two models to assess the characteristics that influence attending a congregate meal for socialization or age- or health-related reasons. The same characteristics that were statistically significant in the bivariate analyses were also statistically significant in the logistic regressions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Administration for Community Living under contract number [HHSP233201500039I/75P00120F37027].