Befriending activities and social isolation among older people in rural mountainous area.

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A secondary analysis of the data showed that social isolation in rural mountainous area was closely associated with low ADL, which indicated a major limitation of the conventional salon-activity approach. We developed a data management system whose unit is a dyad between older people in need of assistance and volunteers who befriend and visit them. This system revealed that, in the subject area, befriending activities have unfolded beyond same-gender and/or similar-age pairs. Our results suggest that promoting the scale and frequency of neighborhood-level befriending activities may contribute to mitigate social isolation among older people.