SUBTYPES OF FRAILTY AND NONFRAIL HEALTH IMPROVEMENT OF DISABILITY PREVENTION PROGRAM: LATENT CLASS ANALYSIS

Abstract

Abstract Frailty has become a public health priority in many advanced countries. However, the effects of national implemented intervention remained unclear. Taiwan implemented a disability prevention program nationwide targeting on people aged 65 and over in 2019. We aimed to identify the subtypes of function outcomes of the national disability prevention programs and compare the different outcome subtypes between frail and non-frail older adults. The current study analyzed participants’ outcomes before and after the program. Two years of data (2019-2020) from the national disability program were used for analysis. Among the participants, 622 were frail (3.8%), and 13084 are non-frail (81.3%). Outcomes were nine domains of Kihon checklist assessed, including nutrition, depressive mood, oral function, fall risk, cognitive function, socialization, independent function, mobility and health knowledge. Latent Class Analysis is used to identify the subtypes of classes in frailty and non-frail older adults. Four classes of outcomes subtypes for frail and non-frail older adults were identified, and both of them have groups of multi-aspect improvement and no improvement groups. The other two classes for frail people were cognitive and independent function improvement group and social and fall risk improvement group, whereas non-frail group had independent function improvement group, and independent and mobility function improvement group. The similar groups identified indicated both frail and non-frail can benefited and not benefited from the program. The two different subtypes identified benefited from the program. Further study investigating the characteristic of people in different outcome subtypes may shed some light for future tailored-made disability prevention.