Overview
In November 2001, the Institute of Aging of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) issued a Request for Applications (RFA) for the development of a protocol for a new initiative, the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. The RFA was officially launched at a planning workshop held in November 2001 in Aylmer, Québec. As a result of that workshop, a research team headed by three principal investigators (Dr. Susan Kirkland, Dalhousie University; Dr. Parminder Raina, McMaster University;and, Dr. Christina Wolfson, McGill University) submitted a joint application, and were awarded CIHR funding to undertake this initiative over an 18-month period, beginning October 1, 2002. The protocol was developed and submitted for International Review in January 2004. A feasibility phase was funded by CIHR to March 31, 2006. The content validity phase protocol was submitted for International Review in May 2006. The CLSA pilot commenced in October 2008. In 2009, the recruitment of the first 20,000 was launched in collaboration with Statistics Canada.
The goal of the CLSA is to assemble a cohort of Canadians aged 45 to 85 years to be followed over time. An integrative approach that examines healthy aging through a number of different disciplinary lenses, arrayed along a continuum from micro to macro levels of organization and analyses is proposed. The determinants of health framework is being used to conceptualize the ways in which social and physical environments, genetic, biological and clinical factors, lifestyle and behavioural factors, social and societal factors, economic prosperity, and the health care system are interrelated to influence disease, health, and well-being.
A longitudinal design, supplemented with a series of cross-sectional snapshots, will provide immediate and continual research productivity. The ultimate aim is to examine aging as a dynamic process; to investigate the inter-relationship among intrinsic and extrinsic factors from mid life to older age; to capture the transitions, trajectories and profiles of aging; to better understand healthy aging; to provide infrastructure and build capacity for high quality research on aging in Canada. The generation and dissemination of such knowledge has far reaching implications for education, research, clinical practice, program planning, service delivery, policy development and decision-making.