Clemson Creative Inquiry
Fall Prevention in Older Adults
Program:
A Matter of Balance
Grant:
Staff Overseer:
Dr. Karen Kemper
Email: kkaren@clemson.edu
Dates:
Spring 2022 - Present
A Matter of Balance
Clemson University has partnered with A Matter of Balance, through an ACL grant, to measure the fall prevention benefits of implementing evidence based programs, like AMOB, in the Upstate South Carolina region.
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Clemson has trained undergraduate and graduate students on the teaching protocols of AMOB, so that they can lead AMOB sessions for eight weeks in the Upstate community. Pre and post surveys are used to measure fear of falling as well as fall risks of the participants.
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Dr. Kemper's team of students is implementing once a week fall risk screenings into the Upstate community to further educate the public on fall risk and the resources they have to minimize said risk.
Creative Inquiry Work:
Spring 2022
Fall 2022
In the Spring of 2022, I joined Dr. Kemper's class on functional assessments of older adults where we laid the groundwork for the fall prevention screenings that would later be added as a component of the fall prevention creative inquiry. As a trial run, the class completed a fall risk screening in the community for the final project. The class identified a need and interest in the fall risk screenings, so we began working on how it could be added to the creative inquiry project.
In the fall of 2022, I officially joined Dr. Kemper's creative inquiry team, working on fall prevention. I was slated to be on team two which would have run an AMOB eight week class, however, we did not have enough participants sign up at our location. We adapted and began planning how and where we could administer the fall risk screenings instead. We ran screenings at the OLLI: lifelong learning institute, St. Andrew's catholic church, and the Clemson Emeritus College. We screened around 30 people in total. We planned to implement more screenings during the spring semester due to the demand and popularity.
Spring 2023
In the spring of 2023, I continued on Dr. Kemper's creative inquiry team where we ...