Senior lifestyles and injury prevention: evaluating the effectiveness of an injury prevention program for older adults

Abstract

The purpose of this multicenter, before-and-after observational study was to determine whether a short educational intervention was associated with improvement in self-reported safety behavior in older adults. We developed 4 original injury prevention presentations with companion testing materials: Motor Vehicle Safety, Fall Prevention, Pedestrian Safety, and Home Safety. Participants also completed pre-post Short Form Health Survey Instrument (SF-12) quality-of-life surveys. Of 414 participants, 226 completed follow-up testing and SF-12 surveys, for a 54.6% response rate. Those who completed either Pedestrian or Home Safety program showed no significant changes (P > .05) in either test scores or SF-12, and they comprised 61.9% of the final sample. Participants in the Motor Vehicle Safety and Fall Prevention programs accounted for 38.1% of the final sample and did show significant improvements between pre-post test scores. Only Fall Prevention participants showed significant differences in pre-post SF-12 scores. In the Fall Prevention group, numerous SF-12 subscores from the initial survey were significantly inversely correlated with pretest scores, and improvements in some SF-12 subscores correlated with improvements in test scores. Findings from the Fall Prevention group suggest that seniors with quality-of-life limitations may be aware of their increased risk and more willing to make changes to enhance safety. Further study is needed because many questions regarding optimal approaches to injury prevention in the aging demographic remain unanswered.