CIHR fund Fredericton 80+ Study, Transitions

CIHR fund Fredericton 80+ Study

by Joel O'Kane, BAAJ II

St. Thomas University held a news conference on January 17, to announce that a team of researchers from St. Thomas University and Dalhousie University has received a $500 000 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to continue their work on the Fredericton 80+ Study.

The Fredericton 80+ Study is the Canadian version of an international research initiative that has been ongoing in Lund, Sweden since 1988 and Reykjavik, Iceland since 1993. The study aims to develop a broader understanding of the aging process and how it is affected by time and location.

“In our rapidly aging society, people over 80 represent the fastest growing age group,” explains Dr. Randall, assistant professor of Gerontology and project director of the study. “From a research perspective, however, we know rather little about them. Moreover, health-wise, they tend to be most at risk. This makes it increasingly critical that we have a comprehensive understanding of what life is like in the latest stages of human development.”

Unique to the Fredericton 80+ Study is the addition of a biographical component which will add some qualitative depth to the data. By interviewing people who were eighty in 1998 and adding in a new group of eighty-year-olds in 2003, the research team hopes to discover how the aging process unfolds over time. In collaboration with research data from Lund and Reykjavik, the team also hopes to understand how varying locations affect the process.

The research team is directed by the St. Thomas Gerontology Department in cooperation with Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Medicine through the Fredericton Family Medicine Teaching Unit, at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital.