Letter to the editor. Tackling social frailty: The role of family and community nurses

This letter commends the recent concept analysis of social frailty in older adults by Pradana et al., emphasizing its value as a framework for understanding and addressing an often-overlooked aspect of geriatric vulnerability. The authors’ identification of four antecedent domains—lifestyle, social and environmental factors, medical services, and health conditions—provides a practical scaffold for targeted interventions. Within this context, Family and Community Nurses (FCNs) are uniquely positioned to mitigate the onset and progression of social frailty through their longitudinal, holistic, and preventive role in community-based care. We highlight the need to translate conceptual antecedents into actionable strategies. FCNs can operationalize preventive measures such as home-based health promotion, motivational interviewing, and early frailty screening during home visits. By addressing lifestyle risk factors, enhancing social connections, and facilitating access to services, FCNs convert abstract determinants into individualized care plans. Their work extends to fostering community engagement, coordinating interdisciplinary collaboration, and leveraging local resources to reduce isolation and environmental deprivation. The letter underscores the value of FCNs as care coordinators within interprofessional teams, integrating health and social interventions to optimize continuity of care. In addition, telenursing emerges as an effective complement, particularly for underserved or rural populations, enabling sustained health monitoring and psychosocial support. While challenges such as workforce capacity and training must be addressed, the integration of FCNs into community-based aging programs is increasingly urgent in light of aging populations and pandemic-related exacerbations of social frailty. Grounding FCN-led practice in the identified domains can improve quality of life, resilience, and aging-in-place capacity. Policymakers are urged to embed and strengthen this role within community health systems to transform the theoretical construct of social frailty into measurable, population-level improvements.