Breaking the cycle of recurrent fracture: implementing the first fracture liaison service (FLS) in British Columbia, Canada.

Unlabelled: Fractures occurring with very little trauma are often caused by osteoporosis and can lead to disability. This study demonstrates that a coordinator working with an orthopaedic team can significantly increase the number of individuals receiving appropriate treatments during their after-fracture care to prevent future fractures from occurring.

Purpose: Well-implemented Fracture Liaison Service (FLS) programs increase appropriate investigation and treatment for osteoporosis after low trauma fracture.

Fall Prevention Mobile Clinic: A Novel Fall Prevention Program for Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

ABSTRACTCauses of falls in older adults are common, multifactorial, and can lead to significant injury. This before-and-after study evaluated the benefits of a Fall Prevention Mobile Clinic (FPMC) in reducing the risk of falling in older adults in British Columbia, Canada. Four hundred seventy-six participants (average age of 83.

Recommendations for a core outcome set for measuring standing balance in adult populations: a consensus-based approach.

Background: Standing balance is imperative for mobility and avoiding falls. Use of an excessive number of standing balance measures has limited the synthesis of balance intervention data and hampered consistent clinical practice.

Objective: To develop recommendations for a core outcome set (COS) of standing balance measures for research and practice among adults.

Facilitators of and barriers to hip protector acceptance and adherence in long-term care facilities: a systematic review.

Background: Hip protectors represent an attractive strategy for reducing hip fractures among high-risk fallers in long-term care facilities. However, clinical studies yield conflicting results regarding their clinical value. This is mainly due to poor acceptance and adherence among users in wearing these devices.

Agreement between video footage and fall incident reports on the circumstances of falls in long-term care.

Objective: Incident reports guide fall prevention efforts in long-term care (LTC) facilities, often based on descriptions of how falls occurred. The validity of these reports is poorly understood. We examined agreement on fall characteristics between fall incident reports and analysis of video footage of real-life falls in LTC.

An educational video to promote multi-factorial approaches for fall and injury prevention in long-term care facilities.

Background: Older adults living in long term care (LTC) settings are vulnerable to fall-related injuries. There is a need to develop and implement evidence-based approaches to address fall injury prevention in LTC. Knowledge translation (KT) interventions to support the uptake of evidence-based approaches to fall injury prevention in LTC need to be responsive to the learning needs of LTC staff and use mediums, such as videos, that are accessible and easy-to-use.

Concept mapping applied to the intersection between older adults' outdoor walking and the built and social environments.

Objective: For older adults, the ability to navigate walking routes in the outdoor environment allows them to remain active and socially engaged, facilitating community participation and independence. In order to enhance outdoor walking, it is important to understand the interaction of older adults within their local environments and the influence of broader stakeholder priorities that impact these environments. Thus, we aimed to synthesize perspectives from stakeholders to identify elements of the built and social environments that influence older adults' ability to walk outdoors.

Evaluation of an evidence-based education program for health professionals: the Canadian Falls Prevention Curriculum© (CFPC).

Introduction: A staged, mixed methods approach was applied to the development and evaluation of an evidence-based education program for health care professionals and community leaders on how to design, implement and evaluate a fall prevention program. Stages included pre-development, development, pilot testing and impact on practice. The goal of the evaluation was to determine if the Canadian Falls Prevention Curriculum met the needs of the target audience and had an impact on learning and practice.

Falls and fall prevention programmes in developing countries: environmental scan for the adaptation of the Canadian Falls prevention curriculum for developing countries.

Problem: Falls in older persons in developing countries are poorly understood, and falls prevention and health promotion programmes for this population are largely lacking.

Methods: A systematic review was carried out of relevant literature on falls and prevention programmes, and falls prevention education, and a scan undertaken of health promotion programmes for older persons in a representative country - South Africa.

Results: Studies on the risk and prevalence of falls are largely retrospective and hospital-based, with varied methodology, including study period, sampling method and sample size.

What does it mean to transform knowledge into action in falls prevention research? Perspectives from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Introduction: The concept of knowledge translation as defined by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Knowledge to Action Cycle, described by Graham et al (Graham et al., 2006), are used to make a case for the importance of using a conceptual model to describe moving knowledge into action in the area of falls prevention.

Method: There is a large body of research in the area of falls prevention.

When evidence is not enough: the challenge of implementing fall prevention strategies.

Problem: As the evidence-based movement has advanced in public health, changes in public health practices have lagged far behind creating a science to service gap. For example, science has produced effective falls prevention interventions for older adults. It now is clearer WHAT needs to be done to reduce injury and death related to falls.

Current approaches to fall risk assessment in nursing homes.

Although falls are the most frequently reported adverse events in nursing homes (NH), fall risk assessment is not standardized or regulated. The purpose of this study was to examine the types of fall risk assessment tools (FRATs) used in NH to identify which are used and the domains they include. Participating facilities completed a survey and were requested to submit a copy of their FRAT.

A public health approach to fall prevention among older persons in Canada.

In 2008 to 2009, there were 53,545 fall-related hospitalizations among Canadian seniors, accounting for 85% of all injury-related hospitalizations and 7% of all hospitalizations for those aged 65 years and older. The estimated cost of fall-related injuries to the Canadian health care system in 2004 was more than $2 billion among a population of 4.1 million seniors.

Multifactorial and functional mobility assessment tools for fall risk among older adults in community, home-support, long-term and acute care settings.

Objective: to conduct a systematic review of published studies that test the validity and reliability of fall-risk assessment tools for use among older adults in community, home-support, long-term and acute care settings.

Methods: searches were conducted in EbscoHost and MEDLINE for published studies in the English language between January 1980 and July 2004, where the primary or secondary purpose was to test the predictive value of one or more fall assessment tools on a population primarily 65 years and older. The tool must have had as its primary outcome falls, fall-related injury or gait/balance.