Establishing Mobile Aging Assessments in New Brunswick’s Long-Term Care Residents
Description
New Brunswick has among the greatest rates of chronic disease and physical inactivity in the country. The population here is aging and the differences in health between people of the same age may be characterized by measuring their ‘frailty’. Cardiovascular function and frailty both worsen with age and get better with regular physical activity. The link between these factors is not well understood but necessary to help develop strategies to help our growing aging population in New Brunswick.
We aim to investigate healthy aging and the potential mediating (or explaining) role of movement on the frailty-cardiovascular function in long-term care residents. A mobile aging assessment will be conducted in 70 older adults in long-term care. Accelerometers will be used to measure physical activity and posture, frailty will be assessed using a validated self-report questionnaire, and cardiovascular function via 24-hr blood pressure monitors. Mediation analyses will be conducted using statistical software. The proposed project will advance our understanding of physical activity and posture on aging in general, establish an important collaboration between researchers and long-term care, and be the starting point for important cross-sectional and interventional work in frail older populations of New Brunswickers.
Objectives
This two-year project aims to better understand the relationships between detailed physical activity and sedentary positions with measures of cardiovascular health and frailty among older adults living in long-term care. It is hypothesized that device-based higher intensity physical activity and less sedentary time will explain the expected relationship between frailty and blood pressure regulation.
Team
Principal Investigator: Myles O’Brien
Co-Investigators: Saïd Mekari, Shirko Ahmadi, Madeline Shivgulam, Renaud Tremblay, Eléonor Riesco
This project is supported by Research NB.
