Grant: Catalyst Grant: Analysis of CLSA Data

Social relationships can protect against a wide range of chronic conditions and facilitate recovery from disease. The quantity and quality of a person's social ties matter for their overall physical and mental health. Women and men differ in the number and size of different types of social relationships and in their health impacts. How social ties influence health and longevity is not fully understood. In addition, although Canada's vision for healthy aging includes a focus on social connections among seniors, Canadian research on social ties in relation to obesity or hypertension is limited and nearly two decades old. The general literature also has many unanswered questions, such as which aspects of different social ties show the strongest variation in biological markers for longevity in older adult women and men. And since lack of social ties of one type might be mitigated by having another type of social tie, more work is needed to understand how different social ties interact to produce combined effects on the health of older adult women and men. The current study aims to fill this knowledge gap by examining multiple aspects of quantity and quality of social ties in relation to waist circumference, body mass index and blood pressure. The project brings together an interdisciplinary and complementary team of clinical, sociological and epidemiological scholars with extensive experience researching the broader social determinants of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The results will have public health implications for supporting healthy ageing since over-50s are more likely to experience transitions in the structure and function of their social relationships, moving from multiple to more limited or no ties.