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Cost-effectiveness Evaluation of a Nutrition supplementation and EXercise (CENEX) programme for older people in Santiago, Chile

Old peopleOverview

CENEX - Chile [ISRCTN48153354]

There has recently been a rapid increase in the number of older people in Chile. Owing to their nutritional and social vulnerability, many of these older people are in poor health, and this is placing a considerable burden on the national health-care budget. To promote healthy ageing, the Government of Chile has initiated a programme of nutritional supplementation (micronutrients and a modest amount of energy) which may have considerable positive benefits for the health and function of older people.

This project aims to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of this national nutrition supplementation programme, and a specially designed physical exercise intervention for older people. The study has been conceptualised
as a public health programme effectiveness study, and has been designed as a full-factorial cluster-randomised controlled trial with 500 participants in each of the four study arms. The main outcomes are incidence of pneumonia, walking capacity and change in body mass index. Costing data (user and provider), collected at all levels, will enable the determination of the cost-effectiveness of the two interventions individually and in combination. The study is sponsored and partially funded by the Ministry of Health in Chile, which is keen to expand and improve its national programme of nutrition for old people based on sound science-base and evidence for cost-effectiveness.

Protocol

The CENEX protocol has now been published in BioMed Central Nutrition Journal. Press here for access to the published protocol.

Project results

The results of the CENEX trial have been published in PLoS Medicine. Press here for access to the published results.

Project staff

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Funders

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