Keep Exercising & Stay Steady: Development and Feasibility of a Health Intervention to Encourage Exercise Maintenance After Fall Prevention Exercise Programmes End.

Summary

Falls and broken bones are a common health problem faced by older adults. Worldwide, one third of adults aged over 65 years old, and half of adults aged over 80 years, fall each year. One in five falls in older adults result in hospitalisation and one in twenty cause broken bones. Each year, 300,000 older adults break a bone following a fall which costs the UK £4.4billion in healthcare costs. Broken hip bones are the most serious outcome of a fall. One in twenty older adults will die and one in five need care assisted living following a hip fracture.

Muscles and bones become weaker after 50 years of age which increases an older adults' risk of falling and breaking a bone. Falls prevention programmes that include muscle strength and balance exercise improves physical function and helps to prevent falls and broken bones in older adults. However, many older adults stop doing exercise and become less physically active after falls prevention programmes end. Gains in balance and muscle strength are lost and falls risk increase if people don't keep exercising. More people are reaching older ages and becoming less active. Therefore, this problem will worsen unless healthcare practices become better at preventing falls and broken bones in older adults.

The research ambition is to create a peer supported home exercise programme that encourages older adults to keep exercising after falls prevention programmes end. This will help to prevent future falls and broken bones which will allow more older adults to continue living independently. The home exercise programme will benefit older adults everyday lives by helping them to maintain good physical health and improve their ability to perform daily tasks without the fear of falling.

Older people at risk of falls, clinicians, and public members will be invited to form a community of practice group. The group will work with the research team to create the home exercise programme. We will target the research to help older adults with the greatest health needs. Older adults living in deprived neighbourhoods have the greatest risk of falling and dying following a broken bone. The home exercise programme will be researched in older adults attending falls prevention programmes in the most deprived regions of England. This will help us to explore whether the programme could encourage the continuation of exercise in older adults who need it most.

Conditions

• Fall Patients

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Keep Exercising and Stay Steady

Eight KESS sessions will be delivered via a motivational interview approach, in face to face group sessions, delivered by postural stability instructors at the participants usual class venue. Guest speakers will deliver specialist education. Participants will receive text message reminders and telephone follow up for non attendance. Three KESS sessions will take place before programmes end with education and various behaviour change strategies being delivered to help participants develop an intention of continuing exercising/ being active when programmes end. Five sessions will take place over a 6 months duration when programmes end with behavior change strategies and education being delivered that aims to bridge the gap between behavioral intentions and actions to encourage the long-term continuation of good physical activity habits and continued social interactions.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Orthopaedic Research UK

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• HealthWorks Newcastle Upon Tyne

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• KOKU Health CIC

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• The University of Manchester

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Glasgow Caledonian University

  collaborator OTHER

• Northumbria University

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-06-01

Primary Completion

2026-04-01

Completion

2026-10-19

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations