About CDC’s STEADI (Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, & Injuries) Toolkit

Take Steps to Prevent Older Adult Falls

Take steps to prevent falls and help your patients stay healthy, active, and independent longer.

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• Take Steps to Prevent Older Adult Falls Fact Sheet for Clinicians [English version – 152KB]

 

CDC’s Injury Center created this toolkit expressly for you—healthcare providers who treat older adults who are at risk of falling or who may have fallen in the past.

As a healthcare provider, you are already aware that falls are a serious threat to the health and well-being of your older patients. More than one out of four people 65 and older falls each year, and over 3 million are treated in emergency departments annually for fall injuries. You play an important role in caring for older adults and you can help reduce these devastating injuries. The STEADI Toolkit contains resources and tools that will help make fall prevention an integral part of your clinical practice.

The STEADI Toolkit is based on a simple algorithm (adapted from the American and British Geriatric Societies’ Clinical Practice Guideline). It includes basic information about falls, case studies, conversation starters, and standardized gait and balance assessment tests (with instructional videos). In addition, there are educational handouts about fall prevention specifically designed for patients and their friends and family.

We hope that the STEADI Toolkit will help you incorporate fall risk assessment and fall prevention into your clinical practice, and enhance your efforts to help older adults stay healthy and independent.

Grant Baldwin, PhD, MPH
Director of the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention
CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control