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Frailty among Older Adults and Its Distribution in England

Sinclair, David R.; Maharani, A.; Chandola, T.; Bower, P.; Hanratty, B.; Nazroo, J.; O’Neill, T. W.; Tampubolon, G.; Todd, C.; Wittenberg, R.; Matthews, F. E.; Pendleton, N.

Authors

David R. Sinclair

A. Maharani

T. Chandola

P. Bower

B. Hanratty

J. Nazroo

T. W. O’Neill

G. Tampubolon

C. Todd

R. Wittenberg

N. Pendleton



Abstract

Background: Information on the spatial distribution of the frail population is crucial to inform service planning in health and social care. Objectives: To estimate small-area frailty prevalence among older adults using survey data. To assess whether prevalence differs between urban, rural, coastal and inland areas of England. Design: Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), ordinal logistic regression was used to predict the probability of frailty, according to age, sex and area deprivation. Probabilities were applied to demographic and economic information in 2020 population projections to estimate the district-level prevalence of frailty. Results: The prevalence of frailty in adults aged 50+ (2020) in England was estimated to be 8.1 [95% CI 7.3–8.8]%. We found substantial geographic variation, with the prevalence of frailty varying by a factor of 4.0 [3.5–4.4] between the most and least frail areas. A higher prevalence of frailty was found for urban than rural areas, and coastal than inland areas. There are widespread geographic inequalities in healthy ageing in England, with older people in urban and coastal areas disproportionately frail relative to those in rural and inland areas. Conclusions: Interventions aimed at reducing inequalities in healthy ageing should be targeted at urban and coastal areas, where the greatest benefit may be achieved.

Citation

Sinclair, D. R., Maharani, A., Chandola, T., Bower, P., Hanratty, B., Nazroo, J., …Pendleton, N. (2022). Frailty among Older Adults and Its Distribution in England. The Journal of frailty & aging, 11(2), 163-168. https://doi.org/10.14283/jfa.2021.55

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 12, 2021
Online Publication Date Dec 23, 2021
Publication Date Apr 1, 2022
Deposit Date Dec 16, 2023
Publicly Available Date Dec 21, 2023
Journal Journal of Frailty and Aging
Electronic ISSN 2273-4309
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 11
Issue 2
Pages 163-168
DOI https://doi.org/10.14283/jfa.2021.55
Keywords Frailty; Frailty index; Ageing; Health inequalities; Rural
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4450956

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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022.
Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.




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