Tackling Falls Preventions from an Asian Perspective

As Singapore’s population ages rapidly, the concern of falls among older adults increases – illuminating a growing health issue that needs to be addressed urgently.

Falls are the leading cause of injury among older adults that can lead to fractures and emotional distress. In Singapore alone, about 13.4% to 17.2% of older adults experience at least one fall every year. Several risk factors account for why falls happen. However, the understanding of how these factors interact with each other to cause a fall is lacking, especially so in the Asian context.

In this study – conducted by Prof. David B. Matchar and Prof Angelique Wei-Ming Chan from FHT, and their co-authors – the team conducted a Group Model Building (GMB) exercise with researchers and clinicians from academic units and public healthcare institutes in Singapore. The exercise aimed to produce a shared visual representation of the causal structure for falls.

The resulting causal loop diagram (CLD) identified four sub-models: fear of falling; injuries associated with falls; caregiver overprotectiveness; and post-traumatic stress disorder and psychological resilience.

From there, the team derived the following insights: psychological sequelae of falls are an important falls intervention outcome; the effects of family overprotectiveness, psychological resilience, and PTSD in exacerbating consequences of falls are not well understood; and there is a need to develop multi-component falls interventions to address the multitude of falls and falls related sequelae.

The study showed that the GMB exercise has potential to generate insights and identify gaps into current understandings of complex healthcare issues that could potentially aid in future intervention studies.