• Satoshi Seino, Akihiko Kitamura, Yui Tomine, Izumi Tanaka, Mariko Nishi, Kumiko Nonaka, Yu Nofuji, Miki Narita, Yu Taniguchi, Yuri Yokoyama, Hidenori Amano, Tomoko Ikeuchi, Yoshinori Fujiwara, and Shoji Shinkai.
• Research Team for Social Participation and Community Health, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.
• J Epidemiol. 2019 Feb 5; 29 (2): 73-81.

BackgroundPreventing and reducing frailty is an important challenge for Japan in the next decade, especially in metropolitan areas. We launched a community-wide intervention trial (the Ota Genki Senior Project) in 2016 to develop effective community-based strategies for frailty prevention in metropolitan areas. This report describes the study design and baseline survey.MethodsThis study is a community-wide intervention trial that integrates participatory action research into a cluster non-randomized controlled trial for adults aged 65 years or older living in Ota City, Tokyo. We allocated 3 of 18 districts to an intervention group and the other 15 to a control group. Using a mailed self-administered questionnaire, we conducted a baseline survey of 15,500 residents (8,000 and 7,500 in the intervention and control groups, respectively) from July through August 2016. In addition to socioeconomic status and lifestyle variables, we assessed frailty status (primary outcome) and physical, nutritional, and psychosocial variables (secondary outcomes). Based on the baseline findings, an intervention to improve outcomes will be implemented as participatory action research. Follow-up surveys will be conducted in the same manner as the baseline survey.ResultsA total of 11,925 questionnaires were returned (76.9% response rate; 6,105 [76.3%] and 5,820 [77.6%] in the intervention and control groups, respectively), and 11,701 were included in the analysis (mean age, 74.3 [standard deviation, 5.5] years; 48.5% were men).ConclusionsThis study is expected to contribute to development of a prototype of a community-wide frailty prevention strategy, especially in metropolitan areas in Japan.Trial RegistrationUMIN Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN000026515).

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