Functional status and disability in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging

“Functional status & disability in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging: An exploration of definitions, prevalence, and the relationship between function and disability” presented by Alexandra Mayhew, PhD student at McMaster University.

Maintaining independence throughout the aging process is a key concern for older adults as well as health and social services. Functional impairments precede the onset of disability and may allow for early interventions to delay disability and maintain independence longer.

The Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) includes several measures of functional status and disability. This presentation explores how activities of daily living can be used to define disability and how the physical function questionnaire and the performance tests can be used to define functional status. The prevalence of disability measured using activities of daily living and functional status based on the physical function questionnaire are provided and challenges with establishing cut points for the performance measures were explored.

Logistic regression models were used to assess the association between physical function and disability which revealed differences in the strength of the association dependent on which combinations of physical function limitations were present.

Register online: http://bit.ly/clsawebinars