Dr Barry Clarke, MD, CCFP

Research interests

Dr Barry Clarkes research interests have centered on primary care of seniors with a focus on frailty assessment/ management and system and policy interventions.

He is the founder of the Long-term Care Frailty program in Nova Scotia called “Care by Design”, participating with the departments research team to assess the programs intervention on patients and the health care system. His research work with CIHI was called the CARES projected which provided some evidence that at the primary care level, frailty progression can be slowed down and even reversed. Building on the frailty work of Care by Design and CARES research, Dr Clarke now works on a CIHI grant “Primary Care frailty and Comprehensive Geriatric assessments (CGA)”  partnered with Fraser BC. This CIHI grant research work will help inform a second phase of his primary care frailty work which is supported by BRIC NS. The second phase work will help understand how to develop and design a primary care strategy to utilize a CGA and frailty diagnosis in everyday practice. The work is modeled after the pediatric Rourke and is presently called a “ Reverse Rourke.”  Finally, as the Medical Director of Northwood which had the highest Covid-19 case load, he has contributed to national research work on how seniors have responded to Covid-19 infection and immunization.