Grant: Meetings, Planning and Dissemination Grant: Aging

Background: The purpose of the PERIL planning meeting is to bring together knowledge users and national experts in knowledge creation from Geriatrics, Community Care, Pre-hospital care, Emergency Medicine and Clinical Trial design. Using an integrated KT approach, the meeting will develop a strong application for the CIHR Institute of Aging (IA) MOP grant competition. The PERIL program of research is funded by the IA to derive and validate a standardized paramedic risk assessment tool known as a clinical prediction tool. Data collected on 2350 subjects from Edmonton, Ottawa demonstrates that Paramedics are able to identify older people at higher risk for subsequent death, hospitalization, or recurrent EMS use. The ultimate goal of the PERIL project is to deliver preventative interventions to patients identified as high risk by the PERIL prediction tool. Developing such an intervention is a critical next step - simply identifying older people who are at increased risk is bad policy, and could be considered unethical. Meeting Objectives: 1) To develop a consensus among knowledge creators and users regarding an optimum community-based preventative intervention to be evaluated in a subsequent CIHR MOP grant. Failure to include knowledge users during the design stage of a new intervention can threaten the uptake a new intervention. 2) To add new investigators, methodological experts, knowledge users and regional representation to an existing team. The proposed meeting would provide funds to assemble representatives with expertise in cluster trial design including step-wedge designs; to expand the number and types of EMS systems participating to potentially include 12 new urban and semi-urban sites in Ontario and Alberta; 3) To create a novel, inter-disciplinary network to promote dissemination of results of the PERIL research program , and to develop an integrated knowledge to action approach for subsequent research.