Grant: Doctoral Research Award : Priority Announcement - Geroscience

The Canadian population is older than before. Older adults are people 65+ years. They now make up 18.9% of the population. Older adults have unique health needs. Healthcare for older adults makes up 44% of healthcare spending. Frailty is a state of lower health and function. Frailty makes it difficult for people to recover from injury and illness. It is most common among older people. Frailty is not permanent. Changes in environments and behaviours can help resolve frailty. A major challenge is that our healthcare system is not well equipped to support frail people. People are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer in older age. Frailty and cancer are both important issues because of the aging population. More than half of people diagnosed with cancer are frail or pre-frail. Older adults with cancer who are frail have worse health outcomes. After cancer treatment, these older cancer survivors may have worse symptoms and quality of life. Interestingly, a study in Hong Kong shows that older adult cancer survivors were less frail than people without a history of cancer. A problem is that little is known about how cancer influences frailty for older cancer survivors. Objectives: 1) To examine changes in frailty over time for cancer survivors and people with no cancer history. Are they different? Why? 2) To assess if being a cancer survivor predicts frailty levels for older adults. This project has 3 steps. 1) Review and identify what is already known. 2) Use data from a large population-based study and statistics to understand changes in frailty status. We will look at frailty scores over time. We will compare frailty scores of people who have had cancer and people who have not. 3) Engage with older adults, caregivers, and stakeholders. We will discuss the results of stages 1-2. We will discuss priorities to prevent and manage frailty. This work can inform frailty monitoring, care, and support services. It is important for people, communities, and healthcare systems.