Falls \u2014 and the fear of falling \u2014 are the leading cause of injury, disability and hospitalization among low-income older adults, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n
To help address this critical issue and reduce disparities, a team of University of Central Florida researchers is partnering with the City of Orlando on a $2.3 million project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.<\/p>\n
The project seeks to address the public health problem and prevent falls with the optimization of technology that is low-cost and portable.<\/p>\n
The work will help ensure older adults can \u201cage in place,\u201d and supports the City Beautiful Livable Orlando: An Age-Friendly Initiative<\/a> Action Plan 2022-2025, which, as one of its primary goals, prioritizes the development of affordable housing options and services to help older residents safely stay in their homes.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the population of our city ages and residents are living healthier, more active and longer lives, it\u2019s important we ensure Orlando is a well-designed, livable community that promotes health and sustains economic growth, creating happier and healthier residents of all ages,\u201d says Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. \u201cWe are excited to work with UCF on this grant as it will play a significant part in understanding how we can improve the health and safety of our older adult population and better implement age-friendly initiatives, especially in underserved neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n Innovative Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n With the new funding, Ladda Thiamwong<\/a>, an associate professor at the College of Nursing and the project\u2019s principal investigator, will work with an intradisciplinary team of experts to roll out a large-scale pilot in low-income, senior communities in Central Florida of an fall assessment intervention they\u2019ve developed and tested.<\/p>\n \u201cThe primary goal is to prevent falls,\u201d Thiamwong says. \u201cWith this real-world testing, we hope to be able to prove it works and is sustainable in order to scale up and prevent falls in more communities.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers\u2019 Physio-Feedback and Exercise, or PEER, intervention program was successfully tested as part of an NIH-funded two-year technology study<\/a>. Their work has also been published in Research in Gerontological Nursing<\/em>.<\/p>\n The researchers showed that their intervention, which uses technology to help reduce people\u2019s fear of falling and improve their balance, was feasible, safe, and improved balance, muscle strength and fall risk.<\/p>\n The technology resembles a small scale and links to a computer. It can be easily transported to rural or low-income communities to provide immediate physio-feedback.<\/p>\n The immediate part is important, Thiamwong says.<\/p>\n \u201cOlder adults trust the results more when it is immediate,\u201d she says. \u201cIt begins a conversation and empowers them to do something about it, and with the technology able to show improvement over time, it is also encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n Perception versus Reality<\/strong><\/p>\n For more than half of older adults, their perception of their fall risk and actual physical fall risk are not aligned, Thiamwong says.<\/p>\n She says a fear of falling is just as risky as poor balance as it may limit their physical activity.<\/p>\n To address this, the researchers\u2019 intervention includes a fall risk appraisal matrix that categorizes participants into quadrants looking at both their fear and balance.<\/p>\n The objective is to bring all participants to low fear and normal balance by the end of the eight-week intervention.<\/p>\n The program includes cognitive reframing to reduce fear and both a group- and home-based exercise program led by a trained peer coach to improve balance.<\/p>\n \u201cSocial support from peers is important to build connections and hopefully continue to keep the physical activity going even after the intervention,\u201d Thiamwong says.<\/p>\n Critical Collaboration<\/strong><\/p>\n The researchers say collaboration with an interdisciplinary team is critical to address older adults falling and other healthcare challenges.<\/p>\n Thiamwong \u00a0began her collaborations with the one of the\u00a0 project\u2019s co-investigators, College of Health Professions and Sciences<\/a> Pegasus Professor Jeffrey Stout<\/a>, after seeing some of his publications on aging research shortly after she joined UCF.<\/p>\n Stout, who is director of the college\u2019s School of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences<\/a>, says the collaborations have developed into a research partnership that has been very successful.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a\u00a0great\u00a0potential for collaboration between programs and faculty expertise in different colleges at UCF,\u201d Stout says. \u201cInterdisciplinary collaboration is important because it allows different fields to share knowledge and ideas, which can lead to new breakthroughs.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the ways UCF fosters interdisciplinary collaboration is through research clusters, such as the Disability, Aging and Technology cluster<\/a> that Thiamwong and project co-investigator Joon-Hyuk Park, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering<\/a>, are a part of. The team has been successful in conducting NIH- and UCF-funded studies.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cluster is an excellent facilitator to promote interdisciplinary research,\u201d Park says. \u201cThe most challenging questions we, as researchers and scientists, seek to address these days can\u2019t be tackled from one discipline, especially when it comes to human science to understand human behavior and study instrumentations. We need expertise from various fields.\u201d<\/p>\n Nichole Lighthall<\/a>, an assistant professor of psychology<\/a> and project co-investigator, says that many factors influence older adults’ fall risk, including physical health, socioeconomic status, as well as psychological motivations and feelings.<\/p>\n \u201cIn addition, if you want to launch a fall-risk intervention that involves technology, you have to consider factors like older adults’ ability to use the technology and cost effectiveness,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s easy to see how problems like this require a team of experts that understand each factor and know how to conduct science across traditional disciplinary boundaries,\u201d she says. \u201cIt’s a truly excellent team and an important problem we are trying to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n Research Team<\/strong><\/p>\n Thiamwong received her doctoral degree in nursing from Mahidol University in Thailand.<\/p>\n She joined UCF in 2016. She\u2019s an expert in healthy aging, fall prevention and gerontological nursing. She is leading a UCF research team in implementing preventive interventions to transform practice, especially for older adults with limited resources.<\/p>\n Stout received his doctorate in exercise physiology from the University of Nebraska \u2013 Lincoln. He joined UCF in 2012. He\u2019s an expert in physical assessments, such as body composition, handgrip strength and physical activity in aging populations, and he has published several studies examining the relationship between psychological and physical variables and the risk of falling.<\/p>\n Park received his doctorate in mechanical engineering from Columbia University. He joined UCF in 2019. He\u2019s an expert in engineering wearable sensors and assistive technologies. His role in the project is to apply his knowledge and experience in wearables-based physical activity monitoring and assessment.<\/p>\n Rui Xie is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science<\/a>, which is in UCF\u2019s College of Sciences<\/a>. He received his doctorate in statistics from the University of Georgia. He joined UCF in 2019.\u00a0 Xie is an expert in designing study designs that are appropriate for collecting data, while minimizing the risk of bias and ensuring the validity of the results, as well as data analysis and result interpretation.<\/p>\n \u201cI was inspired to join this research team because I was fascinated by the multidimensional and multidomain data the team plans to collect in the project,\u201d Xie says. \u201cI felt that my skills and experience in data analysis and modeling could be of great value to the research.\u201d<\/p>\n Lighthall received her doctorate in gerontology from the University of Southern California. She joined UCF in 2015. She\u2019s an expert in cognition and emotion across the adult lifespan, with a specific focus on age-related changes to decision processing and behavior. She is helping to determine the cognitive and motivational factors that impact older adults\u2019 fear of falling by guiding the team\u2019s measurement of these psychological factors.<\/p>\n Vicki Loerzel \u201907<\/strong>,<\/a> a Beat M. and Jill L. Kahli Endowed Professor in Oncology and an associate professor in UCF’s College of Nursing, received her doctorate in nursing<\/a> from UCF. She joined UCF in 2005. She\u2019s an expert in qualitative research and randomized clinical trials, aging populations, and health disparities, with experience in technology-based intervention development and testing.<\/p>\n \u201cInterdisciplinary collaboration is important because one person cannot know it all or do it all,\u201d she says. \u201cYou need the different perspectives and experiences from other disciplines to make your own work more complete and more relevant.\u00a0Without the teamwork of experts from different disciplines, your work and ideas will get stale very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Through interdisciplinary collaboration and a community partnership, UCF researchers are seeking to address falling, which is the leading cause of injury and hospitalization among older adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":134477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,23,24],"tags":[16873,4869,982,17393,8279,40849,41782,18082,22543,8986,54322,54187,14916,17335],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-134468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","category-research","category-science-technology","tag-college-of-health-professions-and-sciences","tag-college-of-nursing","tag-college-of-sciences","tag-department-of-mechanical-and-aerospace-engineering","tag-department-of-psychology","tag-department-of-statistics-and-data-science","tag-disability-aging-technology","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-jeffrey-stout","tag-joon-hyuk-park","tag-ladda-thiamwong","tag-research","tag-school-of-kinesiology-and-physical-therapy"],"yoast_head":"\n