Supporting Well-Being in Retirement through Meaningful Social Roles: Systematic Review of Intervention Studies

Context: The marked demographic change toward greater proportions of older people in developed nations poses significant challenges for health and social care. Several studies have demonstrated an association between social roles in later life and positive health and well-being outcomes. After retiring fromwork, people may lose roles that provide purpose and social contacts. The outcomes of interventions to promote social roles in retirement have not been systematically reviewed. Methods: We examined three research questions: (1) What kinds of interven-tion have been developed to promote social roles in retirement? (2) How much have they improved perceived roles? (3) Have these roles improved health or well-being? We included those studies that evaluated the provision of social roles; used a control or comparison group; targeted healthy retirement-transition adults who were living in the community; provided an abstract written in En-glish; took place in a highly developed nation; and reported social role, health, or well-being outcomes. We searched eight electronic databases and combine