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Each year, over 35 million American adults fall. These accidents are associated with more trips to the ED (emergency department) as well as 1-year mortality. Even though there are solid associations between medications and falls among older adults, prescribing fall risk-increasing drugs is still common.

To help bring this issue to light, a newly published paper from the Center for Aging and Health and collaborators focuses on deprescribing of high-risk drugs for older adults they have received ED treatment for falls. The main goal of this research is implementing medication reconciliation for patients after their falls. In addition, the study seeks to determine if an intervention targeting high-risk medications could be related to decreased falls in the future.

Several CAH authors contributed to this research including Ellen Roberts PhD, MPH, Joshua Niznik PhD, PharmD, Casey Kelley MPH, and Jan Busby-Whitehead MD. Several UNC colleagues also collaborated from the UNC Department of Emergency Medicine (Greta Anton PharmD, Brittni B. Teresi BA, and Martin F. Casey MD, MPH) contributed to this paper.

The abstract from this recently published paper was originally presented at the 2023 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting. Read the full paper

Screenshot of the May 2024 Center for Aging and Health paper in JAGS - Initiative to deprescribe high-risk drugs for older adults