Monitoring older adults’ health for preventive and early interventions: use of the Health Assessment Tool (HAT) in the Swedish primary care setting

The early identification of health declines in older primary care patients is essential to implement interventions for maintaining their physical and mental capacities. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed the lack of available comprehensive health measures that could help in assessing risk, prioritizing hospitalization and planning vaccination.

The group has developed the Health Assessment Tool (HAT) and its derived sex-specific geriatric health charts to measure the dynamic and heterogeneous health status of older populations. The validity and feasibility of HAT in clinical practice remain to be tested.

In the present project, the researchers aim to:

1. study the external validity of HAT in different Swedish population-based cohort studies
2. test the reliability and prognostic value of HAT in the primary care setting
3. assess the feasibility and acceptability of using HAT in primary care

For Aim 1, readily available data from the multi-centre Swedish National Study on Aging and Care (SNAC) will be used. For Aims 2 and 3, data will be collected across eight primary healthcare centres in Stockholm county (urban), Kalmar county (semi-rural), and Nordanstig municipality (rural).

Researchers involved in the project:

Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga, Laura Fratiglioni, Davide Liborio Vetrano, Anders Wimo, Christina Olsson and Caroline Wachtler from the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, KI and Cecilia Fagerström, Professor in caring sciences at Linnaeus University.

Timeline

From 01-01-2022 to 31-12-2024