Impact
Kenneth Rockwood is a geriatrician and Professor of Medicine at Dalhousie University and senior medical director of the Frailty and Elder Care Network at Nova Scotia Health. His research helped turn frailty from a vague clinical impression into a measurable concept, showing that it reflects the accumulation of health deficits that shape how older people recover from illness, respond to treatment and keep their independence. This deficit-accumulation approach underlies the frailty index widely used in ageing research as a measure of biological ageing. He led development of the Clinical Frailty Scale, now used internationally in hospitals and clinics and prominently during the COVID-19 pandemic for triage decisions. His work has also shown frailty to be a key risk factor for dementia and that physical fitness can moderate the effects of neuropathology, and he has helped lead the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging. He has published nearly 700 peer-reviewed papers and nine books and is editor-in-chief of Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology. Honours include the Ryman Prize, appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada and the Royal College's 2026 James H. Graham Award of Merit.
Metrics
- h-index 158 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗