الفهرس 
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Abstract
The progressive rise in life expectancy contributes to an increase in the prevalence of chronic illnesses in the elderly population. Health problems of the elderly result from poor health promoting behaviors. The World Health Organization emphasizes health promoting behaviors as a key strategy to maintain health status of the elderly and assist them to survive with a good quality of life without depending on any family members or the society.
Health promotion is a multidisciplinary field that relies on education and targeted interventions to help change behaviors and environments in ways that are conducive to health.
The main goals of health promotion are to reduce health risks and optimize health and productivity. Health promotion is of significant importance as healthy population reduces health-care spending and lowers the burden on the health-care system, and also maintain an acceptable quality of life and ensuring the continued contributions of older persons to society.
This thesis was conducted in geriatric homes in Cairo to determine the prevalence of applying health promotion measures among elderly in geriatric homes. It is a cross sectional study where 350 elderly 60 years and over were recruited from 12 elderly homes in Cairo.
We found that the most prevalent health promotion measures applied are : chemoprophylaxis (in the form of daily vitamins intake (54.6%), daily aspirin intake (47.4%), and daily calcium and vitamin D intake (19.4%) respectively) followed by screening for hyperlipidemia (16.6%), HTN (15.4%) and DM (11.4%) respectively. The least applied health promotion measures are immunization (influenza vaccine 3.1%, pneumococcal & tetanus vaccine (0%), healthy life style counseling [smoking cessation (6.3%) and exercise counseling (2.3%)] and screening for geriatric health problems [hearing impairment (8.6%), depression (8.6%), nutritional assessment (8.6%), cognitive impairment (8.6%) and urinary incontinence (6.6%)], and there is almost no cancer screening (mammography among females 1.8%, pap-smear among females 0%, and screening colorectal cancer (0%).
There is a high percentage of elderly population being missed from early diagnosis (and subsequently from early intervention) due to the significant lack of screening.
This study has some limitations, where the prevalence of most geriatric problems was low in comparison to other studies, not due to efficient screening services but it was affected by the selection criteria of nursing home residents. It also didn’t include asking about the direct cause of admission to the nursing home and about the length of stay.