Seniors Adding Life to Years (SALTY)

Health Research BC is providing match funds for this research project, which is funded by CIHR’s Team Operating Grant: Late Life Issues. Additional support is provided by Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation, Alberta Innovates Health Solutions and Alzheimer Society of Canada.

Late life is a time when older adults and their caregivers face health and social issues that can impact their well-being. Everyone wants to live well in their final years, but this may be a challenge, particularly for people living in residential long-term care (LTC) settings.

A multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral team of researchers, care providers, administrators, policy makers and older adults and their families from across Canada have come together to better understand how to add quality to years in the last phase of life for people in residential care and their caregivers. Seniors-Adding Life To Years (SALTY) is a four-year research project that will evaluate promising programs, practices and policies currently employed in four provinces – British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia – to support change in how decision makers and practitioners provide care and support in long-term care across the country.

Led by professor Janice Keefe at Mount Saint Vincent University and director of the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging, the study team will develop innovative strategies to understand and assess the impact of existing programs on quality of care and quality of life, with the goal of rolling out effective approaches in jurisdictions across Canada.

SALTY’s research program is organized in four interrelated research streams or problem areas, each applying a different perspective to the late-life trajectory in LTC. Dr. Kelli Stajduhar, of the University of Victoria’s (UVIC) School of Nursing and Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health is co-leading one of the streams. Stajduhar is joined by Drs. Denise Cloutier, also with the Centre of aging and UVIC’s department of geography, and Leah MacDonald, medical director of Island Health’s End-of-Life program. The BC research team is evaluating an implementation project entitled “Improving End-of-Life Outcomes in Residential Care” taking place in four Vancouver Island LTC homes. The goal of the implementation project is to facilitate a promising palliative approach in the context of care provided in LTC facilities for people with life-limiting conditions. Additionally, the team’s evaluation will provide evidence to support application of the project in other provinces.