Evaluating the progression of multidimensional frailty in the Canadian population

Project Summary

Frailty, especially at its earlier stages, may represent a period of transition from healthy aging to dependency that could be a target for interventions directed at restoring health and delaying decline. There is now a fair bit of information on overall frailty in Canada, but less information of different types of frailty (physical, psychological, social, and cognitive) and how they change over time. In the long run, we want to see if knowing about the different types of frailty and how they change over time may help to better target people at risk for functional decline or disability. This project will help us address the question of “why do some people become more frail while others do not?” We will describe how different frailty types (physical, psychological, social, and cognitive) accumulate and change over time. We will also see how the changes in frailty types are related to health care use and mortality and how these relationships differ for women and men across age groups.