The association between multimorbidity resilience and injurious fall occurrences among older adults

Multimorbidity is characterized by the concurrence of two or more chronic conditions that are long in duration, intermittently variable, synergetic in effect, and unlikely to ever fully resolve. Multimorbidity resilience among older adults involves holistic functional, social, and psychological adaptation in response to chronic disease burden at the individual level. Thus far, multimorbidity resilience research has focused on conceptual development and has lacked comprehensive measurement tools. This study contributes to the development of a composite measure of multimorbidity resilience by evaluating its longitudinal relationship with injurious falls. In a prospective cohort sample of 6,685 community-dwelling older adults in Canada from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, this multivariate analysis demonstrates that composite multimorbidity resilience, as well as one of the three resilience domains – psychological resilience – was protective against injurious falls after 2 years of follow-up. Conversely, functional resilience and social resilience did not have a significant association with injurious falls.