ABSTRACT
The health and economic consequences of the rapid growth of the older adult population have led to the development of new and more flexible forms of care, including home-based care. There seems to be a high demand and preference for home-based care services over other care services, like nursing homes, in Cairo, Egypt. To date, no recent systematic work has thoroughly examined this emerging field. To map the current landscape of home-based care services in urban Cairo, this study used an asset-based community development approach as a framework. This allowed for deploying a developmental instead of a deficit-oriented view of the potential match between older adults’ needs on one hand and services offered within communities on the other hand. Data collection aimed to include many different perspectives of protagonists in the field, including non-governmental organizations, governmental offices, private companies, and religious entities. Surveys and appreciative interviewing were combined with Geographic Information System mapping in an innovative approach to qualitative research. Exploratory spatial analysis was applied to obtain a more specific overview of the home-based care field within certain geographical contexts, especially the relationship between the supply and demand of services, and connecting the assets and challenges identified by experts through the interviews and conducted thematic analysis.
