The long-term objective of our application is to provide practical knowledge that has the potential of reducing injury risk and frailty, and enhancing quality of life, among older people. A creative geriatric research environment exists within Emory University School of Medicine, Emory University School of Nursing , and their institutional affiliates, the Wesley Woods Geriatric Teaching and Research Hospital and Clinics and the V.A. Medical Center-Atlanta. Multidisciplinary resources within this site are addressing biomedical, behavioral, and environmental factors that have significance for """"""""successful"""""""" aging and reduction of frailty risk in older persons. The intervention studies proposed in this application are novel, conceptually different, therapeutic exercise approaches that promise, based on preliminary data, to reduce the loss of functional capacities and prevent falls-related injuries in older persons by improving skeletal muscle strength, flexibility, balance, cardiovascular endurance, social functioning, and self-confidence. This proposal specifically aims to study carefully matched samples of elderly subjects to determine the relationship of individual static exercise (balance training with feedback about center of weight displacement) and dynamic group exercise (modified after the principles of Tai Chi, a fitness program practiced by the elderly in Eastern cultures) to frailty. In collaboration with other sites, we wish to collect reliable data for a defined geriatric population including: demographics; measures of health, functional status (physical, psychosocial, cognitive) and environmental status; mobility and activity levels; numbers of falls; and falls-related trauma. We will delineate operational definitions of frailty within biomedical, behavioral and environmental domains and systematically examine the effects of these novel exercise interventions versus a control condition on our conceptualization of frailty in elderly subjects over a 15-week study period and at a 4-month followup. The goal is to identify interventions generating sustained health behaviors that can be incorporated into daily routines and lifestyles of older persons.
