Speakers

Professor David Buchner
USA

David M. Buchner, M.D., M.P.H. is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published extensively in the area of physical activity and public health, with an emphasis on promotion of physical activity and prevention of fall injuries in older adults. He was the principal investigator for the Seattle FICSIT trial. Dr. Buchner joined the University of Washington faculty in 1982, and rose to the rank of Professor of Health Services in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine. In 1999, Dr. Buchner joined CDC as Chief of the Physical Activity and Health Branch.  In this role, he was chairman of the writing group for the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans and he participated in numerous national initiatives involving physical activity and public health. In 2008 Dr. Buchner was appointed to an endowed chair as Shahid and Ann Carlson Khan Professor in Applied Health Sciences at UIUC.

Professor Karim Khan
Centre for Hip Health and Mobility,
University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, Canada

Professor Karim Khan, MBBS, PhD, FACSP is an Australian-trained clinician-scientist based at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.  He is part of the leadership team at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility, a nationally-funded research centre dedicated to providing solutions to the problems of fall-related fractures. Karim is the co-Director of the Falls Prevention Clinic which has served over 1000 fallers since 2005.
Along with Vancouver colleagues and international collaborators, Professor Khan has sought effective, and cost-effective, interventions for seniors at high risk of fall-related injuries. The target populations have included people with osteoporosis, those with previous injurious falls, as well as more recently those with mild cognitive impairment. The Vancouver group’s research has focused on interventions that include strength and balance training.

Among his over 200 coauthored publications, he has contributed to two highly regarded textbooks – ‘Physical Activity and Bone Health’  and ‘Clinical Sports Medicine’.

Associate Professor Jacqueline Close
Prince of Wales Hospital
Sydney

Associate Professor Jacqueline Close is a Consultant Geriatrician at Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney where she runs the Falls, Balance and Bone Health Service. She is a Senior Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia and is currently undertaking a number of clinical risk factor and intervention studies including understanding risk of falls in people with cognitive impairment, and piloting interventions to prevent falls in people with dementia. She has many years of clinical and research experience in falls risk assessment and prevention which has generated a particular interest in translational research to ensure that evidence based interventions reach the intended target populations.

Associate Professor Terrence Haines
Monash University
Melbourne

Associate Professor Terry Haines has a background in physiotherapy and health economics and is the Director of the Allied Health Clinical Research Unit for Southern Health (Australia) and Director of Research for the Southern Physiotherapy Clinical School, Monash University.  Associate Professor Haines has attracted over $(AUD)5.5 million in research grants and tenders since completing his PhD in 2005 including a National Health and Medical Research Council Career Development Award (2010-2013).  His principal area of research is the prevention of falls amongst hospital patients where he has led randomised trials, a cluster-randomised trial and several prospective cohort observational studies.  The largest intervention trial he has led is a randomised controlled trial of a multi-media patient education program conducted across acute and subacute hospital wards (n=1206). This multi-media education program is the second version of an education program that Associate Professor Haines designed and evaluated in the first randomise d trial of an intervention program to reduce falls in the hospital setting.

Professor Stephen Lord
Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute
Sydney

Professor Stephen Lord is a Principal Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney. He has published over 200 papers in the areas of applied physiology, instability, falls and fractures in older people and is acknowledged as a leading international researcher in his field. His research follows two main themes: the identification of physiological risk factors for falls and the development and evaluation of falls prevention strategies. He is also actively engaged in initiatives aimed at implementing falls prevention evidence into policy and practice. His methodology and approach to falls-risk assessment has been adopted by many researchers and clinicians across the world. He has co-written two editions of “Falls in Older People - risk factors and prevention strategies". Updated in 2007, this book comprehensively summarizes the research evidence base undertaken in this field.

Associate Professor Hylton Menz
La Trobe University
Melbourne

Associate Professor Hylton Menz is a podiatrist who graduated with first class Honours and the University Medal from La Trobe University in 1993, and completed his PhD focusing on gait patterns, balance and falls at the University of NSW in 2002. He is currently an NHMRC Research Fellow and Director of the Musculoskeletal Research Centre at La Trobe University. Associate Professor Menz has published widely in podiatry, gerontology and biomechanics journals and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research. In 2006, Associate Professor Menz was awarded the Young Tall Poppy Award by the Australian Institute for Policy and Science. Associate Professor Menz’s current research focuses on the prevalence, impact and management of foot disorders in older people.

Dr Stuart Smith
Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute
Sydney

Dr Stuart Smith is a Senior Research Officer at Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney. He has both an MSc and PhD in Experimental Psychology with postdoctoral work at the NASA Ames Research Centre in California followed by academic posts at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. His research interests involve the development and evaluation of telehealth technologies, in particular for monitoring fall risk in older adults. Prior to returning to Australia in 2007, Dr Smith was involved in the Technology Research for Independent Living centre (http://www.trilcenter,org) in Ireland. He is Chair of a Health Informatics Society of Australia Special Interest Group on Games for Health and is coordinating activities between health researchers and the video games industry in Australia. Dr Smith's research is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia Career Development Award-Industry, NHMRC Project and NHMRC Partnership grants.

Professor John Campbell
Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago
Dunedin

Professor John Campbell is a Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago and a consultant physician at Dunedin Hospital. His epidemiological studies of falls in older people in the 1980s were among the first to investigate this common problem and report the circumstances, consequences and factors related to falls. During the past 20 years he has led a series of clinical trials that tested effective strategies to prevent falls in older people living in the community. These include the Otago Exercise Programme for strength and balance retraining, now used nationwide in New Zealand and internationally, home safety and behaviour modification for elderly people registered blind, and psychotropic drug withdrawal for those 65 years and over who are taking these medications. The research has also shown a number of interventions, including some multifactorial interventions, do not work in certain populations.

Professor Ngaire Kerse
School of Population Health, University of Auckland
Auckland

Professor Ngaire Kerse is a GP academic at the University of Auckland who runs a programme of research aimed at maximizing Health for Older People. Her PhD was from the University of Melbourne where she showed that a health promotion programme for GPs can improve outcomes for older patients. This followed a clinical fellowship in geriatric medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002 Ngaire was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice from the Commonwealth Fund. She has been in Auckland for a decade building teams of researchers and working with the local and national bodies to improve the lot of the older person, including promoting strategies aimed at preventing falls in residential care facilities.

Associate Professor Clare Robertson
Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago
Dunedin

Associate Professor Clare Robertson is a Research Associate Professor at the Dunedin School of Medicine. Her research experience spans the development of falls prevention programmes for older people and the design and execution of high standard clinical trials which include economic evaluations. She was a key investigator in the studies that developed and tested the Otago Exercise Programme (OEP) and has worked with health organisations to promote the OEP and other effective falls prevention programmes in the community. Clare is an author of several systematic reviews including two Cochrane reviews. Her research interests include the choice of statistical methods for evaluating efficacy in falls prevention trials and investigating which falls prevention strategies provide best value for money. This work highlights the effectiveness of single interventions such as exercise for preventing falls and the fact that falls prevention strategies can be cost saving.