OBJECTIVES To test the efficacy of a multicomponent intervention to reduce functional difficulties, fear of falling, and home hazards and enhance self-efficacy and adaptive coping in older adults with chronic conditions. DESIGN A prospective, two-group, randomized trial. Participants were randomized to a treatment group or no-treatment group. SETTING Urban community-living older people. P...

BACKGROUND Health care expenditures for older adults are disproportionately high and increasing at both the individual and population levels. We evaluated the effects of the three cognitive training interventions (memory, reasoning, or speed of processing) in the ACTIVE study on changes in predicted medical care expenditures. METHODS ACTIVE was a multisite randomized controlled trial of older...

The housing choices of the elderly are classified into five types: assisted communities, unassisted 60 plus communities, shared housing, supported housing and conventional housing. The selection of each of the first four is studied relative to the selection of conventional housing. Assisted communities are favored by older households (especially those with the oldest person over 85) and when th...

OBJECTIVE Patient activation questions from a major national Medicare survey are used to highlight characteristics of Medicare beneficiaries with low activation. We demonstrate that Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) data is an untapped resource for further research on patient activation within Medicare beneficiaries and programs. DATA SOURCE Data are from the 2012 MCBS Access to Care...

OBJECTIVES This article compares patterns of association between cognitive functioning and a number of sociodemographic and health correlates among older persons in Taiwan and the United States. METHODS The study uses data from the 1993 Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly in Taiwan and the 1993 Study of Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old in the United States. Separat...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effects of mobility loss on instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) and socioeconomic status in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. METHODS Participants were active registrants in the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis registry completing the Fall 2006 (IADL analysis, n = 10,396) or Spring 2007 (socioeconomic analysis, n = 8180) surveys. Cross...

BACKGROUND Data on trends for disability in instrumental activity of daily living (IADL) are sparse in older Chinese adults. OBJECTIVES To assess trends in prevalence and incidence of IADL disability among older Chinese adults and to explore contributing factors. DESIGN Population based study. SETTING 15 provinces and municipalities in China. SUBJECTS Participants (age ≥60) were from fo...

Introduction Aim is to evaluate validity, reliability, diagnostic precision, and user acceptability of computer simulations of cognitively demanding tasks when administered to older adults with and without cognitive impairment. Methods Five simulation modules were administered to 161 individuals aged ≥60 years with no cognitive impairment (N = 81), mild cognitive impairment (N = 52), or demen...

BACKGROUND Among the many definitions of frailty, the frailty phenotype defined by Fried et al. is one of few constructs that has been repeatedly validated: first in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) and subsequently in other large cohorts in the North America. In Europe, the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a gold mine of individual, economic and health informati...

BACKGROUND In clinical practice, GPs appeared to have an internalized concept of "vulnerability." This study investigates the variability between general practitioners (GPs) in their vulnerability-assessment of older persons. METHODS Seventy-seven GPs categorized their 75-plus patients (n = 11392) into non-vulnerable, possibly vulnerable, and vulnerable patients. GPs personal and practice cha...