The Future of Human Healthspan Demography, Evolution, Medicine, and Bioengineering: Task Group Summaries (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Enhancing the Functional Status of the Future Elderly
Enhancing the Functional Status of the Future Elderly
Pages 7-16
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From page 7... ...
Coming decades will likely bring significant technological advances, both medical and nonmedical, that will importantly impact the capacity for the elderly to function. With respect to medical technologies, numerous technologies -- from smart prosthetics to distance monitoring devices -- will enhance function and independence.
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From page 8... ...
; • Recent trends in disability rates for various age groups; • Expected future changes in lifestyle (e.g., diet, exercise, smoking) , health care (new approaches to diagnosis and treatment)
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From page 9... ...
However, with both the baby boomer generation and younger cohorts currently experiencing increases in the prevalence of diabetes and obesity, as well as potentially increasing numbers of survivors living longer with chronic illness, declining disability rates are in jeopardy of coming to a halt and reversing. Studies to date provide an evidence base for suggesting methods
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From page 10... ...
To enhance the functional status of the future elderly and ensure that disability rates continue to decrease, appropriate interventions must be developed and people need to be willing to adopt, embrace, and sustain the necessary lifestyle modifications. The potential for applying existing knowledge with regard to maintaining function in later life is enhanced by the realization that in the coming decades, significant medical and nonmedical technological advances will importantly impact the capacity of the elderly to function independently.
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From page 11... ...
In addition, the group believed that people would be more likely to begin and maintain a desirable behavior if potential barriers were minimized, which can in part be accomplished by ensuring interventions are cost-effective and attractive to the target population. Strategy Prior to discussing specific interventions, the group set out to identify key outcomes to change through the interventions.
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From page 12... ...
The latter approach has not been typically explored in current functional intervention research. Since no standard blueprint exists detailing how to effectively combine intervention strategies, identify the exact populations to target, and determine the perfect point in the life course that an intervention should begin, the group decided that testing several integrated, multifactor, multilevel approaches would yield the best results.
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From page 13... ...
This technology and its potential are rapidly evolving; careful tracking of changes in this field relative to its application to prevent disability will be needed to apply over the long term. Increased pervasiveness of technology in the household was a common theme among discussion of intervention ideas.
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From page 14... ...
As noted above, the design of intervention studies must be tailored to the intervention and the outcome measures to be assessed. A New Initiative After considering many potential interventions designed to enhance the functional status of the future elderly, the group developed an action plan to move the field forward.
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From page 15... ...
It is the hope of this group that the results from this initiative will also function as a national assessment of disability change over time, thus helping to develop projections of future age-specific disability rates according to various demographic, economic, and behavioral factors. Although the current obesity and diabetes epidemics among baby boomers and younger cohorts threaten to increase disability rates in the future elderly, effective interventions applying established and new methodologies and technology have the potential to not only forestall an increase in disability rates but also to improve these trajectories of change for future generations.
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