PCORI and NIA Announce New Partnership on Fall Prevention

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) recently announced an agreement with the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to form a new partnership that will fund a major intervention study aimed at preventing injuries from falls in older adults. This agreement is the first step in the formation of the "Falls Injuries Prevention Partnership," which is the basis for developing an NIA-PCORI funding announcement for a large-scale, multi-year clinical trial on preventing injurious falls in non-institutionalized older individuals. PCORI plans to commit up to $30 million to this effort, though the final amount is yet to be determined. The NIA is in the process of developing a Funding Opportunity Announcement that is expected to be finalized in late July; further details will be available at that time. NIA has issued a Request for Information to gather insights from individual stakeholders and organizations involved in the care and well-being of older individuals.

The INQRI program has long been interested in this topic and has funded two recent studies designed to take a personal approach to fall prevention.  Led by Patti Dykes, one INQRI team has developed and tested a fall prevention tool kit using health information technology that successfully reduced the number of in-hospital falls among older patients. The tool kit includes a fall risk assessment, a patient-specific prevention plan, a handout for patients and their families and a poster to hang over a patient’s bed. INQRI also funded a team headed by Marita Titler to test fall prevention interventions tailored to patients’ risks for falls. This study involves three Michigan community hospitals which will implement processes to address multiple patient-specific factors that can contribute to and put patients at risk for falls, creating a “targeted risk factor fall prevention bundle” for each patient.

Click here to check out INQRI resources related to falls.
Click here to learn more about the PCORI-NIA partnership.