The 5P program, personalized and participatory primary prevention pathway: Rational and design of a clinical trial in general practice

Abstract

The aging of the population is leading to an increase in the number of people with loss of autonomy, placing a strain on the health care system. Its prevention at early stages such as the frailty stage would allow an improvement in the quality of life of seniors while limiting health care expenses. The “Atout Age” prevention program set up by the health public authorities of Reunion Island for retired people and the new frailty assessment tools based on mathematical machine learning algorithms could improve the ambulatory care of senior citizens. At present, referral care remains hospital with comprehensive geriatric assessment and there is a lack of evidence of the effectiveness of a prevention pathway for loss of autonomy in primary care. For these reasons, the 5P program “Personalized and Participative Primary Prevention Pathway” has been started in order to obtain scientific evidence.In this article, we present the objectives, design and first results, used in the 5P program up to the implementation of a clinical trial in general practice.The program is articulated in 3 phases. A first phase to evaluate the acceptability of innovative screening tools for frailty. A second pilot phase evaluates the feasibility of a large-scale ambulatory clinical trial in general practice. The last phase described in this article, is a multisite, pseudo-randomized, controlled clinical trial measuring the impact of the “Atout Age” workshops on the physical performance and the quality of life of seniors compared with their usual ambulatory follow-up.

Keywords

• Comprehensive geriatric assessment
• Clinical trial
• Disability
• Frail elderly
• General practice
• Machine learning