Home-based care as a multidimensional public health intervention supporting healthy ageing in an urban Romanian context

Healthy ageing increasingly requires integrated, community-based approaches that extend beyond clinical care to address functional ability, psychosocial well-being, and supportive care environments. Home-based care has emerged as an important component of community-based support for ageing in place, yet its multidimensional role in healthy ageing remains insufficiently explored, particularly in Central and Eastern European contexts. This study adopts a multidimensional public health perspective to examine home-based care for older adults in an urban Romanian setting. Using an exploratory mixed-methods design, descriptive quantitative data on service access and functional support (N = 10) were complemented by qualitative insights derived from structured case profiles (n = 3). The findings suggest that home-based care may support functional autonomy, psychosocial well-being, and continuity of daily life among older adults in community settings. At the same time, the results highlight the importance of family caregiving and indicate potential constraints related to service access and coordination. These findings illustrate how home-based care arrangements operate within household and service contexts and provide exploratory evidence that may inform future research and policy discussions on integrated approaches to healthy ageing.