From Today’s Geriatric Medicine, Vol. 7 No. 5 P. 20
By Susan Hughes, PhD; Renae Smith-Ray, PhD; Amy Shah, MPH; and Gail Huber, PhD
The specialized program, combining structured physical activity with health education to build self-efficacy and effect behavior change, helps to reduce lower extremity joint pain.
Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) demonstrate that arthritis is the most common condition affecting older adults in the United States and the No. 1 cause of disability among them.1 Our study team first became aware of the prominence of arthritis in 1981 when we conducted an evaluation of a model long-term home care program for older adults in Chicago. We learned at that time that arthritis was the most common chronic condition reported by homebound clients.
In fact, when we queried these homebound clients, we heard time after time that arthritis is the condition that interferes most with daily function. To learn more about the connection between arthritis and disability, we obtained funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct a prospective longitudinal study in Chicago of 600 older adults. Again we found that arthritis was the most common condition reported by study participants and the No. 1 cause of disability when they were contacted after two and four years.
We measured participant joint impairment at baseline and conducted an analysis to try to determine which joints were causing the problem. Analyses clearly indicated that osteoarthritis (OA) in the lower extremity joints was the culprit, a scenario that makes sense considering that people use these large weight-bearing joints to perform most activities of daily living such as transferring, climbing stairs, and toileting.
