Senior Fall Prevention Initiative
Do you know your Senior Safety Score?
30% of seniors over age 65 fall each year. Hip fractures and serious head injuries are common injuries resulting from senior falls There is also a risk of losing your health and independence and being forced out of your home into a Nursing Home. Seventy fatalities occur each day in the United States related to senior falls. Many of these senior falls could have been prevented.
The Senior Safety Questionnaire assesses risks for each senior including medical, home environment and personal safety risks. It is online, quick and simple with only 18 questions, free and confidential. You can do it or your can have someone help you. The Senior Safety Score is immediately sent with relevant recommendations to minimize each area of risk.
Your information is confidential.
Senior Testimonial
Dear Dr. Curtis
We have found the suggestions in your videos and emails very helpful, and particularly the recent one on the safe use of stepladders resonated strongly with both of us. I really like the very concrete guidelines (always have 3 points of contact; 2 steps up is enough) and the tests (by the way, I definitely could not squat down and stand up again 5 times…definitely need to work on strength).
We have followed several of the suggestions you proposed: removing area rugs, installing grab bars in Hellmut’s shower, moving as many necessary activities as possible to one floor in our home, upgrading the lighting. We are considering painting each outside board of our exterior steps a slightly different color to make it more visible. But honestly, I think the most effective long-term solution for us will be to sell our 1960s home with its exterior and interior stairs, narrow hallways, 90-degree turns into standard-width doors to the bathrooms and bedrooms, and large garden and yard, in favor of a one-floor smaller house with a manageable yard.
If we move, we will keep in mind your excellent suggestions for senior safety and either find a home that incorporates the important ones or remodel before we move in.
Cheryl A
What do you need to do to be safer and prevent falls?
Take the Senior Safety Questionnaire and get your Senor Safety Score.
Our Story
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Dr. Curtis was a Family Medicine Doctor for 35 years. This included serving as the Primary Care Medical Director for Evergreen Hospital during the last 5 ½ years of medical practice. He retired in 2017. Dr Curtis recognized that there were almost no services to address the non-medical, home environmental risk for falls. In 2018, using information from patient experiences he created the Senior Safety Questionnaire to assess fall risk in older adults.
Dr Curtis has been doing virtual presentations for seniors to teach them how to prevent falls. Here is what Heather Steele from the Seattle YMCA said:
“As the Active Older Adult Program Supervisor for the Northshore YMCA, I am always on the lookout for informative programming for our seniors”. Dr. Curtis provided a virtual presentation on Fall Prevention for our AOA community and it highlighted his useful tool for them to assess their risk. He explained comprehensive steps for them to take to then limit their risks, matching their specific needs. His presentation style was engaging and informative.”
Heather S, August 2020. Our YouTube presentation is on their website at https://www.seattleymca.org/blog/learn-about-senior-fall-prevention.
Your information is confidential.
Nonprofit Status
The Senior Fall Prevention Initiative (SFPI), a nonprofit 501(c)(3), was established January 2020. Its purpose is to help aging adults decrease their risk of falls and injuries. Dr. Milton Curtis launched this nonprofit to address the issue of senior fall prevention in our increasingly aging population. Check out the website at www.seniorsafetyscore.org for practical, easy and affordable recommendations and useful educational articles and videos.
What people say?
Find Out Your Senior Safety Score FREE
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