A Systematic Literature Review on Community-based Health Promotion Interventions to Reduce Secondary Conditions: What are the Effects of These Interventions on Subsequent Consumer Participation in the Community?

Secondary conditions can have very serious outcomes for people with physical disabilities. Such consequences can range from immobility due to pressure sores to withdrawal and isolation due to depression. To further investigate these assumptions we conducted a systematic literature review on community-based health promotion interventions for adults with mobility impairments. More specifically, we were interested in any health promotion interventions to help mobility impaired individuals reduce risk and or prevent potential secondary conditions. Additionally, we were interested in those articles that not only identified proximal outcomes (i.e., whether the intervention reduced risk factors to secondary conditions occurring), but also more distal factors (i.e., did the intervention have any effect on increasing community participation for the participants?) Our results show that while researchers report on proximal effects of their interventions (e.g., lower UTIs, or increased stamina and flexibility) they frequently did not collect data nor report on more distal effects regarding how reduction of secondary conditions influenced increased participation in the community for people with mobility impairments.