News
CIHR Funding and Dissemination Grant
MAPS researchers received funding through the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Planning and Dissemination Grant – Institute Community Support competition to enhance dissemination and uptake of the international consensus statement on supporting adults with IDD who are frail to a number of different audiences, including adults with IDD; family members; and front-line providers, administrators, decision-makers, and researchers in the field of IDD. Funds will be used to further develop knowledge translation (KT) products and tools to facilitate the uptake of the consensus statement recommendations. See information about CIHR funding decisions here: https://bit.ly/1QNcXbe, and the consensus statement here: https://bit.ly/2T4oND8
Predicting Long Term Care Admission with IDD Frailty
MAPS project shows that adding a measure of frailty specific to IDD improves prediction of admission to long term care or death. Read the article recently published in the Canadian Geriatrics Journal. Read the abstract here: https://bit.ly/2zTNbA2
Canadian Frailty Network’s 2018 Catalyst Grant
MAPS researchers received funding through the Canadian Frailty Network’s 2018 Catalyst Grant Competition to promote intersectoral collaboration to support frail older adults with IDD in the community. Building on a successful program of research on frailty, Drs. Lynn Martin and Hélène Ouellette-Kuntz will work with frail adults with IDD, family members, and providers in the developmental services and home care sectors to identify key elements for effective collaboration and partnership. Through an in-depth case study involving interviews and document review, successful strategies for intersectoral action to support frail adults with IDD in the community will be identified, and related “Call to Action” resources will be produced.
Segmentation as a Planning Tool
Segmentation has been traditionally used as a marketing tool to understand the wants and needs of specific consumer groups and allow service providers to create targeted implementation strategies. While segmentation has been used in other health areas to help target interventions, in this paper, Klag and Ouellette-Kuntz adapt the approach to create an understanding of the support needs of two Canadian subgroups: autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability. Read how here: https://bit.ly/2Qd8030
Impact of Interventions on Primary Care
Efforts in Ontario since 2006 to improve the provision of primary care to adults with IDD were the focus of a recent study led by Hélène Ouellette-Kuntz. The authors compared preventive care provided through primary care to adults with IDD aged 40-64 from 2003 and 2016 to determine any impact the interventions had. While a small increase in provision for preventive care was seen for men, no change was seen for women, suggesting a small population-level impact. Read the full methodology and the authors’ recommendations for future research here: https://bit.ly/2pK6XZz.
Global Prevalence of Intellectual Disabilities
After a 2009 study reported that about 1% of the global population was affected by an intellectual disability, a systematic review conducted by MAPS sought to update this statistic with recent studies. While researchers found that there was a global interest in understanding the prevalence of intellectual disabilities and a potential lower occurrence than originally reported in 2009, differences in measurements, definitions, and case reporting between the studies prevented strong comparisons to be made. Read more about the details of the study, plus the findings on the incidence of intellectual disabilities, here: https://bit.ly/2RgmmNG
Mortality Patterns in Adults with IDD Across Ontario
A recent study shed light on mortality patterns in Ontario for adults with IDD between 2011 and 2014. Mortality rates were found to decrease over time, but were still in excess when compared to the general Canadian population. Some findings echoed those of other studies internationally including the inappropriate coding of IDD as an underlying cause of death. There is a need to improve cause of death coding practices on death certificates for this population in Ontario and elsewhere. For more information on the most common causes of death and patterns relating to sex and age, read the full article here: https://bit.ly/2ojMc63.
Consensus Statement on Frailty in Adults with IDD
As an emerging field of research, no consensus statement on how to support frailty in individuals with IDD has existed until now. Through international collaboration, MAPS worked with a panel of experts to create a statement that promotes awareness and guides support planning for frail and pre-frail adults with IDD. Some ideas were immediately agreed upon by stakeholders, including using a person-centred approach to planning and considering frailty earlier in adults with IDD. Ongoing international debate initially caused contention to arise around having ageing in place and safety as priorities of the statement. To read the full consensus statement and how it was developed, go to https://bit.ly/2IT8ZgW.
Tori Barabash and Amy Choi – New Members
MAPS is excited to welcome two new members to our growing team! Tori Barabash, who will be entering the MSc Epidemiology program at Queen’s University in September, is taking over the social media portfolio and other tasks from Mara Habash. We wish Mara well as she starts her career as an epidemiologist with Cancer Care Ontario. Amy Choi, an undergraduate student in Life Sciences at Queen’s, will be working on an aging-related project for her 4th year honours thesis.
Clarabelle Lee – Undergraduate Thesis
Congratulations to Clarabelle Lee, BSc Life Sciences student at Queen’s University and MAPS trainee, who completed her undergraduate thesis advancing our work on frailty and IDD. She presented her research at the 2018 OADD RSIG Day held in Kingston on April 7. You can view her poster at https://bit.ly/2EQxt8t.
