COVID-19 pandemic risk, response and resilience on social isolation, distress and depression

The new Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a highly contagious disease that was discovered near the end of 2019. COVID-19 has been conceptualized as a ‘gero-pandemic,’ defined as a disease that has spread globally with heightened significance and deleterious consequences for older populations. Older people are particularly vulnerable to the deleterious health impacts of the pandemic, including social isolation and loneliness, leanxiety, and depression due to risk and mitigation efforts (e.g., physical/social distancing measures, closure of community spaces). This project investigates risk and protective factors, including multimorbidity, health behaviours, socio-economic status and background factors, that affect the resilience and vulnerability of Canadian older adults focusing on social isolation and loneliness, and depression outcomes. This will be accomplished by linking all available CLSA data to date: Baseline, Follow-up 1 (FU1), COVID-19 Baseline, and COVID-19 Exit survey data.