Completed Research Projects

Scoping Review on Compliant Flooring

Compliant flooring is an intervention that may reduce the incidence and severity of fall-related injuries in healthcare settings, including acute and long-term care, but few sites have implemented compliant flooring. Health care decision makers have indicated that one barrier to uptake is lack of synthesized evidence about key performance aspects of compliant flooring.

To address this gap, we conducted a ‘scoping review’ (a type of literature review) to describe the extent, range, and nature of research activity about compliant flooring, as well as to identify gaps in research. We searched six academic databases (to find published studies on compliant flooring) and various sources of grey literature (to uncover unpublished information).

Two researchers systematically screened records for eligibility, extracted data from 84 eligible records, and synthesized results from these records according to four themes: biomechanical efficacy, clinical effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and workplace safety. Toward the goal of meeting the information needs of healthcare decision makers tasked with preventing fall-related injuries, we delivered a webinar in partnership with CADTH and distributed a Research Brief summarizing the results of this review.

Collaborators: Dr. Dawn Mackey, Dr. Stephen Robinovitch, Dr. Fabio Feldman, Dr. Andrew Laing

Funding: CIHR Knowledge Synthesis Grant

Key Personnel: Dr. Chantelle Lachance, Michal Jurkowski, Ania Dymarz

Publications: BMJ Open, PLoS One, Research Brief

Ergonomic Evaluation of Compliant Flooring

Compliant flooring aims to prevent fall-related injuries among older adults, including residents of long-term care. Compliant flooring also impacts the working conditions of long-term care staff, but research on this topic has been very limited. In particular, due to its low stiffness and susceptibility to deform under load, compliant flooring may increase rolling resistance versus standard flooring. In turn, maneuvering wheeled equipment (e.g., patient lifts, wheelchairs, carts) on compliant flooring could expose long-term care staff to higher forces than standard flooring.

In this project, we quantified the hand forces required for long-term care staff to push loaded floor-based lifts and wheelchairs over compliant flooring relative to standard flooring. We also assessed staff perceptions of pushing difficulty and compared forces to tolerance limits. We conducted this project in partnership with Revera’s Royal City Manor long-term care home in New Westminster, British Columbia.

Collaborators: Dr. Stephen Robinovitch, Dr. Fabio Feldman

Funding: SFU President’s Research Start-up Grant, CIHR Team Grant in Strategic Teams in Applied Injury Research, CIHR Team Grant in Mobility and Aging, SATech, Inc, CIHR Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship, AGE-WELL Graduate Student Award in Technology and Aging, MSFHR Scholar Award

Key Personnel: Dr. Chantelle Lachance, Dr. Alexandra Korall, Colin Russell

Publications: Human Factors, Journal of Applied Ergonomics

Perceptions of Compliant Flooring

Compliant flooring aims to prevent fall-related injuries in high-risk health care environments, such as long-term care. But, uptake of compliant flooring has been limited. Guided by the knowledge-to-action framework, we explored barriers and facilitators to adoption of compliant flooring as a fall-injury prevention strategy within long-term care, and we identified pressing directions for future research. We did this by conducting in-depth interviews with senior managers from long-term care, and we hosted an interactive one-day stakeholder symposium with decision makers from health care, industry, and research.

Collaborators: Dr. Stephen Robinovitch, Dr. Fabio Feldman, Pet-Ming Leung

Funding: CIHR Knowledge Synthesis Grant, CIHR Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship, AGE-WELL Graduate Student Award in Technology and Aging, MSFHR Scholar Award

Key Personnel: Dr. Chantelle Lachance, Valeriya Zaborska

Publications: Canadian Journal on Aging, Journal of Housing for the Elderly

Pre-Dialytic Exercise for Hemodialysis Patients

The number of Canadians receiving treatment for kidney failure has more than tripled over the past twenty years. Hemodialysis patients have poor health outcomes compared to healthy populations, low functional status and physical functioning, high mortality rates, reduced quality of life, and an increased likelihood of experiencing symptoms of depression. Increasing the level of exercise among hemodialysis patients has been well researched as a feasible intervention to offset the poor physical and mental health outcomes in this population.

The Pre-Dialytic Exercise for Hemodialysis Patients project investigated the effects of a 12-week thrice weekly exercise program delivered immediately prior to dialysis on the physical performance, mental and emotional well-being, and quality of life of hemodialysis patients. The results of this pragmatic study informed the Fraser Health Authority on the feasibility and benefits of maintaining a similar program at their Community Dialysis Units.

Collaborators: Dr. Dawn Mackey, Dr. Fabio Feldman, Pet-Ming Leung

Funding: The Kidney Foundation of Canada

Key Personnel: Ashley Kwon, Shianne Bains

Effect of Financial Incentives on Physical Activity in Older Adults: A Systematic Review

The health benefits of physical activity are irrefutable, but the vast majority of older adults do not meet national physical activity guidelines. To improve adherence, behavioural economics has prompted the development of financial incentive interventions to promote physical activity. Financial incentives can stimulate positive health-related behaviour change by providing fast and tangible rewards, helping to overcome barriers to the uptake and maintenance of regular physical activity. 

This systematic review summarized the design and effectiveness of past financial incentive interventions to promote physical activity among older adults. The results provide an improved understanding of the current evidence base in addition to gaps in the existing literature. In the long term, these findings may help inform programs and policies to improve older adult engagement in physical activity.

Collaborators: Dr. Dawn Mackey

Funding: SFU Big Data USRA, MSFHR Scholar Award

Key Personnel: Emaan Abbasi, Nicole Whittle

Using business analytics to identify older Canadian adults at risk of chronic disease

Chronic diseases exert an enormous burden on older adults in Canada. Approximately 9 out of 10 older adults report having at least one chronic condition, while more than 2 out of 3 older adults report having two or more chronic conditions. Healthcare costs due to increased spending on the treatment of chronic diseases are increasing at an unsustainable rate. Physical activity is recognized as a critical component in the prevention and management of chronic diesases. But, health care decision makers need better ways of knowing who's at risk for developing chronic diseases, so that can target physical activity interventions and allocate other prevention resources most efficiently. 

The aims of this study were therefore to 1) apply modelling techniques from the field of business analytics to predict the presence of certain chronic diseases among older Canadian adults, and 2) calculate the expected healthcare costs of older adults based on their predicted probabilities of these chronic diseases.

To achieve this, we used demographic, lifestyle, and medical data from a nationally representative sample of older adults enrolled in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Guided by data mining techniques that are designed to detect complex relationships in real-world data, the results of this study represent an initial step toward identifying subpopulations of older adults who would benefit from chronic disease prevention efforts. 

Collaborators: Dr. Dawn Mackey, Dr. David Whitehurst, Dr. Guy Faulkner

Funding: MSFHR Scholar Award

Key Personnel: Timothy Ainge