title: Long-term Care Trajectories in Canadian Context: Patterns and Predictors of Publicly Funded Care.
abstract: Drawing on a structural life course perspective (LCP), we examined the most common trajectories experienced by older long-term care (LTC; home and community-based care, assisted living, and nursing home care) recipients. The overall sequencing of care transitions was considered along with the role of social structural location, social and economic resources, and health factors in influencing them.
  
  
  
  Latent class and latent transition analyses were conducted using administrative data obtained over a 4-year period for clients aged 65 and older (n = 2,951) admitted into publicly funded LTC in 1 Canadian health region.
  
  
  
  Four main LTC trajectories were identified within which a wider range of more specific or secondary subtrajectories were embedded. These were shaped by social structural factors (age, gender, rural-urban residence), social and economic resources (marital status, income, payment for services), and health factors (chronic conditions, functional and cognitive impairment and decline, problematic behaviors).
  
  
  
  Our findings support the utility of a structural LCP for understanding LTC trajectories in later life. In doing so, they also reveal avenues for enhancing equitable access to care and the need for options that would increase continuity and minimize unnecessary, untimely, or undesirable transitions.
authors: Department of Sociology, British Columbia, Canada.|Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health (IALH), British Columbia, Canada.
authors: Margaret J
authors: MJ
authors: Penning
authors: Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health (IALH), British Columbia, Canada.|Department of Geography, British Columbia, Canada.
authors: Denise S
authors: DS
authors: Cloutier
authors: Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health (IALH), British Columbia, Canada.
authors: Kim
authors: K
authors: Nuernberger
authors: Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health (IALH), British Columbia, Canada.|Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
authors: Stuart W S
authors: SWS
authors: MacDonald
authors: Fraser Health Authority, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.
authors: Deanne
authors: D
authors: Taylor
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D002170:Canada; D005260:Female; D005380:Financing, Government / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors