Older women's preferences for information to support healthy choices for alcohol use and physical activity: A discrete choice experiment

Information promoting healthy choices and chronic disease self-management can improve older women's health and patient engagement. Less than half of older women receive healthy lifestyle information from their physicians. Physicians cite barriers including insufficient time and reimbursement. This research considers whether women prefer healthy lifestyle suggestions from their physicians, or do they prefer information from other sources?;Social network and communication theory suggest that informational social support flows from the web of relationships in the social network and arrives in multiple modalities. Behavioral economics theories posit that a woman makes a tradeoff decision among the various sources and forms. A survey was conducted using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) among women 65 and older in a primary care setting (n=110), to compare women's preferences for source and modality of information related to alcohol use and physical activity.;Women surveyed generally preferred information suggested by their physician, but this varied by domain. For alcohol information, women's first preference for source was split between the physician and a health or medical article. Source was found to interact with the modality of information to affect preferences. For physical activity, women generally preferred group classes but for alcohol, women preferred printed or Internet information.;This study found that nearly a quarter of women drank alcohol at or above the upper threshold of safe use. This suggests that nearly 25 percent of this sample of older women could be at individual risk from alcohol use, especially in combination with medications, co-occurring diseases and risk of falls. Given the potential for risk, it is important that older women be referred to appropriate information about healthy alcohol use.;This study has implications for the evolution of team-based primary care. This study suggests that to influence older women to make optimal healthy lifestyle choices, consideration should be given to appropriate sources and forms of health information to promote patient engagement and self-management. Developing and maintaining effective physician-patient linkage and communication could be important to support optimal health and wellness for older women.