Disablement Process in Mexican American Older Adults

描述（由申请人提供）：虚弱已被确定为老年人残疾，机构化和死亡的前兆。在少数民族人群中，脆弱性尚未得到广泛研究。我们建议在一个明确定义的墨西哥裔美国老年人样本中检查虚弱。我们将确定力量，平衡，步行速度，认知，日常生活技能和其他脆弱因素的变化是否会影响一个人在社区中独立生活的能力。该申请要求五年的资金，以延长和扩大我们目前的国家老龄问题研究所赠款题为“在墨西哥裔美国老年人的启用-禁用过程。" 拟议研究的具体目标是： 1.在一个定义明确的墨西哥裔美国老年人样本中应用虚弱的标准定义， 2.检查脆弱对残疾的影响，健康相关的生活质量，制度化和死亡率在墨西哥裔美国老年人的横截面和纵向。 将从1,000名墨西哥裔美国老年人中收集数据。参与者是来自西班牙裔老年人既定人群流行病学研究（EPESE）的子样本。本研究将与西班牙裔EPESE收集的数据相协调。在五年内将进行两次面谈和基于业绩的评估。在我们目前的资助中建立的评估者培训和数据收集协议将被完善并用于调查。脆弱性将作为启用-禁用模型的一个新组成部分，使用Fried及其同事开发的操作定义进行研究。分层线性建模和统计技术旨在检查复杂变量之间的关系随着时间的推移将被用来测试假设。这些模型将包括人口统计学风险因素和力量和晚年生活功能的标准化测量，我们目前的研究表明，这些因素与残疾、健康相关的生活质量和死亡率有关。这些发现将扩大我们对脆弱如何影响迅速扩大的墨西哥裔美国老年人口的独立性和生活质量的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Frailty has been identified as a precursor of disability, institutionalization and mortality in older adults. Frailty has not been extensively studied in minority populations. We propose to examine frailty in a well- defined sample of Mexican American older adults. We will determine whether changes in strength, balance, walking speed, cognition, daily living skills and other components of frailty impact a person's ability to live independently in the community. The application requests five years of funding to extend and expand our current National Institute on Aging grant entitled "The Enabling-Disabling Process in Mexican American Older Adults." The Specific Aims for the proposed research are to: 1. Apply a standard definition of frailty in a well defined sample of Mexican American older adults, and 2. Examine the impact of frailty on disability, health related quality of life, institutionalization and mortality in Mexican American older adults cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Data will be collected from 1,000 Mexican American older adults. The participants are a sub-sample from the Hispanic Established Population Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (EPESE). The study will be coordinated with data collected for the Hispanic EPESE. In-person interviews and performance-based assessments will be conducted two times over five years. Rater training and data collection protocols established in our current grant will be refined and used in the investigation. Frailty will be examined as a new component of the Enabling-Disabling Model using an operational definition developed by Fried and colleagues. Hierarchical linear modeling and statistical techniques designed to examine relationships among complex variables over time will be used to test hypotheses. The models will include demographic risk factors and standardized measures of strength and late life function that our current research has shown are related to disability, health related quality of life, and mortality. The findings will extend our understanding of how frailty impacts independence and quality of life in the rapidly expanding Mexican American older adult population.