Toward early detection and management of frailty in community-dwelling older adults: Planning a web-based frailty evaluation tool for patient self-evaluation and self-report
Description: Frailty is a condition that makes it difficult to deal with stress. Over 22% of Canadian men and 25% of Canadian women 65 years and older are considered frail. This is about 1.8 million Canadians. The frailer a person is, the more likely they are to be hospitalized and die. If frailty is not caught early it can increase by 3% every year, so there is a serious need to detect and manage frailty early. We recently made a website to help doctors assess and manage the frailty of their patients, but to reach the 1.8 million frail Canadians the website needs to be accessible to everyone, especially older adults. For example, because many people do not have medical training, the frailty website we made for doctors will be confusing and not helpful. The main question we will attempt to answer in this proposal is how do we make a frailty website that older adults can use while still being useful to doctors? We will generate ideas and plan how to best create a frailty website for older adults. To do this, we will first hold an educational meeting where doctors and researchers, experts in frailty, will give short talks. This event will be streamed live over the internet and reach a wide audience. Audience members will be made up of people who are interested in the idea of a frailty website, such as older adults, people who take care of older adults, other doctors, and researchers. In the second part, we will invite older adults and doctors from the first meeting to small group discussions, to share their thoughts about the problems and solutions of potential development of a frailty website for patients. Making a frailty website that can be used by the older adults is key to catching frailty early. By including older adults, people who take care of older adults, and doctors early in the planning stages of an older adult frailty website is important to its success. Catching frailty early will reduce healthcare costs and enhance the lives of individuals living across Canada.
Amount: CA$10,000
Funding type: planning
Funder scheme: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2023-12-31
Investigator: Xiaowei Song
Institution: Fraser Health Authority (Surrey, BC)
Topic: Frailty in Older Adults
Subfield: Geriatrics and Gerontology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 185525_1
OpenAlex ID: G6981286791