What is CARE75+?

CARE75+ is a cohort study of community-dwelling older people (age 75 years and over). The aim of CARE75+ is to better understand ageing, what contributes to people remaining fit or becoming frail, and how we might moderate or slow down frailty.

The cohort was established in 2014 as part of a programme of studies within the Primary care-based management of frailty in older people’s theme. This theme is part of the Collaboration & Leadership in Applied Health Research & Care (CLAHRC) Yorkshire & Humber, funded by National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

What data do we collect?

CARE75+ collects health, social and economic data. The cohort has well-characterised frailty status derived from the electronic Frailty Index link to outputs and ref if possible to allow the identification and severity grading of frailty and to investigate frailty trajectories (how frailty changes over time and what might influence it).

CARE75+ assessments include detailed information on the demographic, health and social circumstances of participants. An extensive range of measures are collected using validated instruments, including assessments of frailty, cognition, mood, health-related quality of life, comorbidity, medications, resilience, loneliness and self-efficacy. Measures have been chosen to ensure that CARE75+ includes measures for applied epidemiological investigation and randomised trial evaluation of future interventions. For the full list of data outcomes see our data dictionary (link to EXCEL file). Data are collected using a bespoke electronic data capture application, the CARE75+app.

Blood samples are collected from consenting Leeds and Bradford participants at baseline and at 12 month follow-up to provide a resource to investigate associations of a range of organ specific, immunological, endocrine and genetic markers with frailty.

Does the cohort support other studies?

Yes! As well as providing longitudinal data, CARE75+ has been established using a Trials within Cohort design (TwiCs) Link to relevant paper if possible, to provide a platform for intervention development, feasibility and definitive randomised control trials. To date CARE 75+ has supported 5 additional studies (sub-studies) (link to sub-studies sections). CARE75+ has broad consent for data linkage.

Where are we recruiting participants?

The cohort has sites recruiting nationwide in rural and city locations with varying population demographics and levels of social deprivation: Bradford, Leeds, Hull, Scarborough, Newcastle, Durham, Doncaster, Oswestry, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Exeter and Plymouth.

The study has approval from the National Research Ethics Service Committee, Yorkshire & the Humber – Bradford & Leeds (14/YH/1120).

UKCRN reference 18043