Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Sep 26;7(5):104.
doi: 10.3390/geriatrics7050104.

The Association between Social Vulnerability and Frailty in Community Dwelling Older People: A Systematic Review

Ayodele Ayeni  1   2 , Adrienne Sharples  3 , David Hewson  1
Affiliations
Review

The Association between Social Vulnerability and Frailty in Community Dwelling Older People: A Systematic Review

Ayodele Ayeni et al. Geriatrics (Basel). .

Abstract

The aim of this systematic literature review was to determine whether social vulnerability is associated with frailty in older people. Databases were searched for literature from January 2001 to March 2022. Hand searches of reference lists of the selected articles were also used to identify other relevant studies. Studies that met the inclusion criteria were selected. Two independent reviewers assessed the methodological quality using an established tool. Eleven eligible studies from Canada, Europe, USA, Tanzania, Mexico, and China were selected. The level of social vulnerability measured by the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) from a meta-analysis was 0.300 (95% CI: 0.242, 0.358), with the highest SVI in Tanzania (0.49), while the lowest level of SVI was reported in China (0.15). The highest frailty level of 0.32 was observed in both Tanzania and Europe, with the lowest frailty reported in a USA study from Hawaii (0.15). In all studies, social vulnerability was a significant predictor of mortality for both sexes at subsequent data collection points. The association between SVI and frailty was high in Tanzania (r = 0.81), with other studies reporting stronger correlations for females compared to males, but at small to moderate levels. In one study, an increase of 1SD in SVI was linked to a 20% increase in frailty score at a subsequent evaluation. Additional study is warranted to determine a potential causality between social vulnerability and frailty.

Keywords: frailty; older people; social vulnerability.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flowchart of the systematic review.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of mean SVI [25,26,27,28,29,30,31,33,34,35].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. United Nations Department of Economic Social Affairs Population Division . World Population Prospects 2019. United Nations; New York, NY, USA: 2019.
    1. Spiers G., Matthews F.E., Moffatt S., Barker R.O., Jarvis H., Stow D., Kingston A., Hanratty B. Impact of social care supply on healthcare utilisation by older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Age Ageing. 2019;48:57–66. doi: 10.1093/ageing/afy147. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Andrew M.K., Keefe J.M. Social vulnerability from a social ecology perspective: A cohort study of older adults from the National Population Health Survey of Canada. BMC Geriatr. 2014;14:90. doi: 10.1186/1471-2318-14-90. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Nguyen T.N., Ngangue P., Bouhali T., Ryan B.L., Stewart M., Fortin M. Social Vulnerability in Patients with Multimorbidity: A Cross-Sectional Analysis. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health. 2019;16:1244. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16071244. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shega J.W., Andrew M., Hemmerich J., Cagney K.A., Ersek M., Weiner D.K., Dale W. The relationship of pain and cognitive impairment with social vulnerability--an analysis of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging. Pain Med. 2012;13:190–197. doi: 10.1111/j.1526-4637.2011.01309.x. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources