Community-based services could reduce frailty risk: study

Japanese researchers claim to have lowered the risk of frailty in older adults with low care needs by 40% using community-based services.

With an aim to understand the relationship between the risk of frailty and the use of the two typical types of care service during the five years after certification in Japan’s public Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) program, researchers from the Osaka Metropoliton University conducted a claims-based analysis on 655 non-frail or pre-frail older adults. These adults were newly certified as having low care needs.

“In Japan, older individuals certified as being on a support level in a so-called public Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) program utilise two typical types of LTCI services: community-based adult day services and home-based personal assistance services,” said Professor Ayumi Kono, from the Graduate School of Nursing at Osaka Metropolitan University.

Adult day services are forms of community-based care that offer social, recreational and health-related services in group settings, while personal assistance services include routine housekeeping and personal care in home care settings.

The study, by Professor Ayumi Kono, from the Graduate School of Nursing at Osaka Metropolitan University, and team, found that adult day services mitigated the risk of developing frailty by 40% (compared with not using these services). Personal assistance services usage was not significantly associated with delaying the onset of frailty. These findings suggest that appropriate service use or care management can potentially reduce the risk of frailty and maintain independence among older adults, according to the researchers.

Professor Kono said, “As Japan is unfortunately the front-runner among super-aged societies in the world, clarifying the effects of community-based care services for preventing frailty among older individuals with low care needs would be significant and valuable knowledge that could apply to other aging countries.”

“Based on these results, we recommend actively going outside instead of staying at home to avoid the progression of frailty,” Kono said. The results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.

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