KINE 4565 Injuries related to falls October 17, 2006

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KINE 4565Injuries related to fallsOctober 17,
2006
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This week

• Falls Burden
• Risk Factors
• Interventions
• Student presentations
• What are the implications for prevention?

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How do we approach falls prevention?

• First we select a type of injury or a population
  at risk-children-adults occupational-adults
  recreational-older people

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2. What is the burden of injury

• What is the burden of injury?Falls account for
  8 of injury deaths in the US 11,275 deaths in
  199595 classified as unintentional1 in 20 US
  population visits ED for a fall injury each year
• -in other populations-one third of fall-related
  deaths involve older people, etc

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3. What are the risk factors?

• Think of the Haddon matrixAre there factors
  associated with
• -the individual (host)
• Alcohol, risk taking behaviour
• -the agent-the environment?
• Surfacing, housing design

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4. Modifiable risk factors

• What is the potential for changing the risk
  factors?
• E.g can change housing design, but not cognitive
  impairment
• How acceptable are the changes going to be?-will
  older people wear hip protectors?
• How can an older person living alone call for help

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5. Can they be modified using the 3 Es of
injury prevention

• Education Tell people about the risk
• Engineering Make workplaces, homes, playgrounds
  safer
• Enforcement Make laws that require people to
  comply

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Presentations
Close

• Lauren
• Richard

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7. Pulling it all together

• If you were put in charge of reducing falls, what
  would you do?-for children-for adults-for
  older people