Integrating Frailty Research into the Medical Specialties-Report from a U13 Conference

Although the field of frailty research has expanded rapidly, it is still a nascent concept within the clinical specialties. Frailty, conceptualized as increased vulnerability to stressors because of significant depletion of physiological reserves, predicts poorer outcomes in several medical specialties, including cardiology, HIV care, nephrology, and in the behavioral and social sciences. Incorporation of frailty assessment and frailty research into the specialties is hindered by a lack of a consensus definition, by the proliferation of measurement tools, inadequate understanding of the biology of frailty, and lack of validated clinical algorithms for patients who have frailty. In 2015, the American Geriatrics Society, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine held a conference for awardees of the NIA sponsored ‘Grants for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists Transition into Aging Research (GEMSSTAR)’1 program to review the current state of the knowledge regarding frailty in the sub-specialties, as well as to highlight key examples of integrating frailty research into the medical specialties. Key research questions to advance frailty research into specialty medicine are proposed.