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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2015
Contact: White House Conference on Aging,
202-619-3636
Preventing Falls in Older Americans
New data and resources on falls prevention released
WASHINGTON—Today at the Falls Prevention Summit convened by the White House Conference on Aging and the National Council on Aging, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new data highlighting the seriousness of falls and new tools to support greater adoption of best practices to reduce falls in older adults.
CDC’s new data show that from 2000 to 2013, age-adjusted death rates from unintentional falls grew for those aged 65 years and over. Death rates from falls increased from 38.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 67.9 in 2013 for males. For females, death rates virtually doubled from 24.6 in 2000 to 49.1 in 2013.
To help communities identify appropriate evidence-based fall prevention programs CDC developed a new community guide: Preventing Falls: A Guide to Implementing Effective Community-Based Fall Prevention Programs. The “how-to” guide provides resources and strategies to help community-based organizations initiate and maintain effective programs. The guide focuses on implementation of fall prevention programs, offering strategies on program planning, development, implementation, and evaluation.
“Each year, one in three Americans over age 65 falls, and the fear of falling may lead older adults to limit their activities, which can worsen mobility, increase the risk of falling, and detract from quality of life,” said Nora Super, Executive Director, White House Conference on Aging. “These new tools expand the resources available to support community-based fall prevention interventions.”
The Falls Prevention Summit is being convened by the White House Conference on Aging and the National Council on Aging to call attention to the critical role of falls prevention in health aging and to provide opportunities for older Americans and stakeholders to share their views and ideas on this important issue.
HHS’ Administration on Community Living is supporting falls prevention through grant awards designed to both increase participation in evidence-based community programs to reduce falls and falls risk and encourage innovation, public-private collaboration and long-term sustainability of community-based programs. The President’s Fiscal Year 2016 Budget includes $5 million in new funding to expand this work, through additional support to the National Falls Prevention Resource Center and new community-based grants to grow and sustain evidence-based falls prevention interventions.
Resources:
Preventing Falls: A Guide to Implementing Effective Community-Based Fall Prevention Programs
For additional information on older adult falls, please visit the CDC Home & Recreational Safety page.
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This website was last updated on February 3, 2016. It is no longer being maintained; however, it remains here as an archive for information on the 2015 White House Conference on Aging forums, blogs, press releases and activities over the period from October 2014–December 2015.
Some material on this website may be superseded, as it was created at a particular time. It may contain references to activities, policies and programs that have no current application. Content in the archive may link to web pages that have moved or no longer exist, or may refer to other documents that are no longer available.
For further information on the use of these archived documents please contact the Administration on Aging/Administration for Community Living at aclinfo@acl.hhs.gov. To stay up to date on issues important to older Americans, please visit Aging.gov or the Administration on Aging.