• The initiative led by San Sebastián University, together with the Hualaihuén Community Union, Municipality and the companies Blumar, AquaChile, Salmones Camanchaca and Mowi, seeks to contribute to improving the quality of life of elderly adults from 7 rural localities in the Los Lagos region.

Contributing to raising the quality of life of elderly people from the localities of Mañihueico, Contao, Aulen, Quildaco, Tentelhue, Rolecha and La Poza, in the municipality of Hualaihuén, Los Lagos region, is the objective of the collaborative project More Quality of Life Hualaihuén, an initiative that has unified academic work with the public and private sectors through a collaboration agreement recently signed.

The initiative corresponds to a Community Outreach project framed within the Territorial Program More Health Closer at Hand, developed at the De la Patagonia campus of San Sebastián University, in which the Municipality of Hualaihuén, the Community Union of Neighborhood Boards and local companies in the salmon farming sector actively participate: Blumar, AquaChile, Salmones Camanchaca and Mowi, in a commitment to the territories where they maintain operations. In the sectors to be served, 480 people over 75 years old live, whose schooling does not exceed 3.6 years and where more than 80% of them live in rural contexts.

The agreement signing took place in person in the locality of Contao, where municipal, community entities and private sector companies participated.

The proposal also seeks to launch a community space that allows for the coordination of activities that impact people’s health and promote intergenerational and cultural encounters among families and localities, and for this, within a period of 6 months, it includes four fundamental lines of action: a health intervention-diagnosis in the field with 50 elderly adults, already completed with the participation of the Nursing, Kinesiology, Nutrition and Dietetics and Dentistry programs to obtain a survey of the health status of the elderly population in the benefited localities; the architectural design for the so-called Elderly Adult Community Space-Contao; the development of a working model for the community space, and the search for public financing to co-finance operational and/or investment areas of the community space.

The Importance of Elderly Adults

In this regard, Gladys Alvarado, president of the Community Union of Hualaihuén, explained the origin of the project: