ShareCompartir
Announcement: National Fall Prevention Awareness Day — September 23, 2015
Annually in the United States, 2.5 million persons aged ≥65 years are treated in emergency departments for injuries from falls, resulting in $34 billion in direct medical costs (1). Given these costs, the aging U.S. population, and the increasing fall death rates (2), falls have become a major risk to the health of older persons in the United States.
In conjunction with the 2015 White House Conference on Aging, CDC launched the implementation of the STEADI (Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries) initiative for healthcare providers. STEADI uses established clinical guidelines and scientifically tested interventions to help providers address their patients' risk for falls, identify modifiable risk factors, and provide effective interventions (3). Free online training with continuing education is available and electronic health record vendors (Epic and GE Centricity) are developing STEADI modules to help incorporate fall prevention into clinical practice. For every 5,000 providers adopting STEADI over a 5-year period, one million additional falls could be avoided, saving an additional $3.5 billion in direct medical costs (4).
National Fall Prevention Awareness Day is September 23. As part of the campaign, health care providers are encouraged to do the following:
- Screen patients by asking if they have fallen in the past year, feel unsteady, or worry about falling
- Review patients' medications and stop, switch, or reduce the dose of drugs that increase the risk for falls
- Recommend daily vitamin D with calcium
Additional information is available at http://www.cdc.gov/steadi.
References
- CDC. Injury prevention and control: data and statistics (WISQARS). Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2015. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars.
- Sheu Y, Chen L, Hedegaard H. QuickStats: death rates from unintentional falls among adults aged ≥65 years, by sex—United States, 2000–2013. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2015;64:450.
- Stevens JA, Phelan EA. Development of STEADI: a fall prevention resource for health care providers. Health Promot Pract 2013;14:706–14.
- CDC. STEADI—older adult fall prevention. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2015. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/steadi.
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from typeset documents.
This conversion might result in character translation or format errors in the HTML version.
Users are referred to the electronic PDF version (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr)
and/or the original MMWR paper copy for printable versions of official text, figures, and tables.
An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S.
Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371;
telephone: (202) 512-1800. Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to
mmwrq@cdc.gov.
