Grant: Project Grant

Older adults travel different pathways as they approach the end of life. Some enjoy good health right up to the end, while others are ill or incapacitated for a long period of time, and then just slip away. The ability of a person to perform their normal activities of daily living (a.k.a. "functional capacity") is key to the lives of older people, since researchers have found it to relate to important things like death, nursing home admissions, and hospitalization. That said, the research on functional capacity as we get progressively older is sparse. Important questions remain, such as how different chronic diseases (and combinations thereof) affect our late-life pathways; and how being on diverse pathways can have different implications for health and well-being. The Manitoba Follow-up Study (MFUS) is one of the longest-running studies of health and aging in the world. MFUS has been following the same group of 3,983 men since 1948. From a mean age of 30 years, there are still about 250 men alive, now at a mean age of 94 years. Using already-collected MFUS data, we will investigate whether and how previous disease diagnoses affect the late-life mental and physical pathways of older men, and we will consider whether and how changing life circumstances (such as moving to assisted living or death of a spouse) influence the late-life pathways to ultimately affect men's quality of life. Our findings will provide valuable insight for care providers, health care professionals and policy makers, 'to do their job'. Our findings will inform customized resource planning and health care provision for older men who are navigating different pathways towards the upper reaches of the life course.