Environmental continuity: a social-geographic approach to structural change in lowering health care cost through elderly participation.

Tremendous growth in the number of elderly has resulted in the need to consider options for decreasing their need for dependent living, while increasing their level of health. Environmental continuity is supported as one such alternative. An examination of how the elderly relate to their surroundings and their relationships with others enables the identification of social and cultural thresholds beyond which the elderly cannot be expected to predict, participate in, or control events in their environment. "Threshold management" is suggested as a preventive health measure for reducing social disintegration in the elderly and concomitant strains to the health care system and society.