Awarded Research Cooperative Agreement to Prevent Unintentional Injuries

Description

The State of Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, as part of a three-year collaborative project, will develop, implement, and test a comprehensive approach to preventing falls among older adults through two complimentary strategies. They include a broad-based program to engage service agencies and health providers through brief multifaceted interventions, and a targeted strategy of individualized multi-factorial assessment and interventions for high-risk adults age 65 and older.

Goals of the project are to:

• enhance existing community efforts in Dane County to support falls prevention;
• test the effectiveness of a community-wide falls prevention program to decrease the rate of fall-related hospitalization compared to control counties;
• test whether an in-home multi-factorial assessment plus community-wide intervention can decrease the rates of falls among high-risk older adults compared to usual care plus community-wide intervention; and
• test whether a program of in-home multi-factorial assessment plus community-wide intervention can decrease the rate of falls among high- risk older adults compared to in-home, multi-factorial assessment without community-wide intervention.

Year one will include developing training, outreach programs, and other materials in collaboration with community partners. Multi-factorial interventions for high-risk older adults will be implemented and evaluated during years two and three. Research intervention will also be fully integrated into existing health provider and community-based programs to facilitate service consultation during year three.