Monitoring older adults’ health for preventive and early interventions: use of the Health Assessment Tool (HAT) in the Swedish primary care setting

The early identification of health declines in older primary care patients is essential to implement interventions for maintaining their physical and mental capacities.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed the lack of available comprehensive health measures that could help in assessing risk, prioritizing hospitalization and planning vaccination.

Our group has developed the Health Assessment Tool (HAT) and its derived sex-specific geriatric health charts to measure the dynamic and heterogeneous health status of older populations. Still, the validity and feasibility of HAT in clinical practice has not been tested.

In the present project we aim to: 1) study the external validity of HAT in different Swedish population-based cohort studies; 2) test the reliability and prognostic value of HAT in the primary care setting; and 3) assess the feasibility and acceptability of using HAT in primary care. For Aim 1, we will use readily available data from the multi-center Swedish National Study on Aging and Care (SNAC).

For Aims 2 and 3, we will collect data across 8 primary healthcare centers in Stockholm county (urban), Kalmar county (semi-rural), and Nordanstig municipality (rural). The predictive capacity of HAT and its changes over time will be assessed using AUC and c-statistics. Feasibility and acceptability will be assessed using qualitative data.

Our final goal is to support primary care professionals in planning personalized interventions to preserve older adults’ health.