The Longitudinal Study of Health and Ageing in Kenya, or LOSHAK, is a collaboration between the Department of Population Health at Aga Khan University (AKU) in Nairobi and the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR).
At the heart of LOSHAK are two complementary surveys, each designed to align with established international research networks. The first “Core” survey will target roughly 6,500 Kenyans aged 45 and older throughout the entire country. It will gather a range of health, social, and economic information. The survey will be deployed in more than a dozen languages, reflecting the country’s linguistic diversity. It is intended to harmonize with a global family of similar aging studies modeled after the U.S. Health and Retirement Survey.
Nested within the Core survey is a second study of about 2,300 individuals in the Coast Region of Kenya aged 65 and older, focused on identifying risk factors for cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and related conditions. This cognitive survey follows the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP), connecting it, too, to an international network of comparable health studies.
Finally, the research team plans to incorporate environmental and physical activity data from wearable devices, as well as biomarker data from collected blood samples, checking for signs of inflammatory diseases and other chronic health conditions. The award will allow the team to establish a long-term survey cohort, laying the foundation for future studies to examine other dimensions of population aging.
All of the information gathered through LOSHAK will be publicly available to researchers for comparison alongside harmonized studies around the world, providing insights to academics, government officials, and policymakers across the African continent and beyond. Because chronic diseases, dementia, and caregiving pressures are nearly universal, the project’s impact is not necessarily confined to Kenya—or even sub-Saharan Africa—but could inform care anywhere, including in the United States.
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