Promoting Health LongevIty Through Mitigation and Prevention of Frailty in Community-dwelling Elderly (Pro-LIFE)

The current healthcare response to frailty has been mainly reactive to acute health crises of the elderly. With its insidious onset and progression, frailty is often not apparent unless actively sought. Well-validated models of frailty already exist and, instead of trying to create new frailty criteria or insisting on a universal approach to measuring frailty, it is needed to move on to higher levels of care systems supporting their practical implementation, mapping the chosen frailty instrument to its specific role. This pragmatic study will equip older persons with awareness of their frailty status through community-based screening, allowing for timely stage-specific care to avoid deleterious outcomes. While older persons meeting frailty criteria will be referred for comprehensive geriatric assessment, pre-frail older persons will be targeted for multi-factorial exercise and nutritional intervention in the community to reverse the frailty trajectory. An over-arching aim will be to create a sustainable triaging system and early intervention programme that can be administered by trained members of the community. This will allow older persons to receive regular re-assessments in the community such that any transitions to a higher state of frailty may be captured and promptly addressed.