Dr. Fraser is an Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa and an affiliate researcher of the Bruyère Research Institute. She is also a member of the LIFE Research Institute and the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging. Her background is everything interdisciplinary that explores the health of older adults. In particular, she is interested in how older adults manage a physical task (i.e., walking or balancing) at the same time as a cognitive task (i.e., listening or talking). She examines physical outcomes (i.e., walk speed) and cognition (i.e., brain activity) in real-time, while people perform these activities alone or simultaneously. She uses functional near infra-red spectroscopy to capture changes in brain activity during walking/stair climbing tasks. A better understanding of how people multitask might aid us in preventing physical and cognitive decline, as well as, reduce falls risk. In addition to understanding how older adults multitask, she is also interested in how stereotypes about older adults and chronic health conditions might affect the rehabilitation process. More recently she is leading an interdisciplinary team that is co-creating an app with older adults for safer stairs and fall prevention.

AGE-WELL Funded Projects

• Ambient-Based Physiological and Functional Monitoring (5.1 AMBI-MON)

Outputs