Preventing fall-induced injuries through research

What we're trying to do through our research is to help keep people safe and in particular we want to help prevent fall induced injuries. My research interest is in exercise or training to help improve people's lives. When I first talked with Dr. Means, he had this idea of developing a new treat, prevention training method for older adults. And I thought if I do this research I can create more take for, especially for older population, most falls that people experience or do do slipping or tripping. What we've tried to do is train people to respond with slip or trip. To move their body quickly, and an effective way to help prevent fall to the ground. We allow people to practice those movements in a safe, controlled manner, over and over again. And really, just like anything that we do that involves skill like playing the piano, any athletic activity, you practice it over and over through petition. You're able to improve your ability to do that task. We anticipate this type of training being used in senior community centers. It could be used in retirement communities, physical therapist offices, occupational therapist offices, doctors offices. What we have started to do is really to try to focus the training on the specific body movements that are necessary to prevent a fall. That's really what is unique about what we're doing, is we're not training general balance ability, we're focusing very specifically on the quick reactions and movements that we all have to execute after we trip or slip. Then we're able to prevent falls from slips or trips. That really are the two main causes of falls among adults over the age of 65.