With more than 40,000 participants spanning 10 provinces, the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) has entered the final stretch of recruitment. This achievement brings the study within reach of the overall recruitment goal of 50,000 participants.

“We would not have been able to get to this point without the generosity of our participants who have donated their time to contribute to health research,” said Christina Wolfson, CLSA co-principal investigator and professor at McGill University. “We also thank our outstanding CLSA staff across Canada who work long hours to ensure the study runs smoothly and who are the face of the CLSA to our participants.”

The 50,000 men and women, aged 45 to 85, over the next 20 years are the driving force behind the CLSA. These individuals support data collection efforts by enthusiastically donating their time through visits to data collection sites and home interviews, or through hour-long telephone interviews.

Recruitment has been completed for the telephone interviews, with data collected from 21,242 participants. Over the next year, the final group of 10,000 participants will be recruited for in-home interviews and data collection site visits. These individuals will visit one of 11 data collection sites across Canada, where they will take part in physical assessments.

“We are thankful for all the support we have received to date. The data collected will play an important role in helping future generations,” Wolfson said. “Although we are close to the overall recruitment goal, we are not slowing down but are continuing to work hard to recruit the final 10,000 participants. The next year will be critical to our success.”

Recruitment of all 50,000 CLSA participants is anticipated to be completed by summer 2015. The first data from the baseline telephone interviews were released in June 2014. For more information on the data access process, visit www.clsa-elcv.ca.