The Australia & New Zealand Fall Prevention Society are pleased to announce that the 11th Biennial Australia & New Zealand Fall Prevention Society Conference will be held at the Sofitel Wentworth Hotel, Sydney, NSW on the 23rd to 25th of November 2025.
We look forward to another memorable conference filled with high quality talks on fall prevention.
Dear ANZ Falls Prevention Society Members,
We are pleased to announce that the draft Recommendations and Good Practice Points from the Australian Fall Prevention Guidelines, prepared for the Australian Commission on Quality and Safety in Health Care, are now available for consultation here.
Please send any feedback you may have to this email: anzfallsprevention@neura.edu.au by the 25th February 2024 c.o.b.
In the lead up to the 2023 Joint Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Falls Prevention Society & World Falls Congress, we chat with Dr Sue Dyer, one of the invited speakers. Sue is a Senior Research Fellow at Flinders University. She has worked as a researcher in both the public and private sector, with expertise in evidence-based medicine methodologies including health technology assessment, systematic reviews, meta-analysis and guideline development, particularly within the fields of geriatrics and diagnostic technologies.
Sue will be presenting on falls prevention in residential aged care: updated meta-analyses with novel analyses for complex interventions
In the lead up to the 2023 Joint Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Falls Prevention Society & World Falls Congress, we chat with Dr Hannah Seymour, one of the invited speakers. Hannah is the Medical Lead of the Electronic Medical Record Program Team, as well as a Consultant Geriatrician at the Fiona Stanley Fremantle Hospitals Group. Hannah has worked in Acute Orthogeriatrics at Fiona Stanley Hospital since 2015 where she shares the care of older people with orthopaedic surgeons.
Hannah will be presenting at the conference on how technology can help us in caring for older people at risk of falls and fractures.
With Presentations from Dr Jennie Hewitt and Rik Dawson.
Presented by the ANZFPS Early-Mid Career Researcher Sub-Committee
Presenters: Dr Jennie Hewitt and Rik Dawson
Dr Jennie Hewitt will discuss the implementation of Sunbeam (successful fall prevention intervention) into RACF. Rik Dawson will discuss his experience delivering fall prevention exercise using telehealth focusing on the user experience. Jennie and Rik will also discuss how AN-ACC has influenced fall prevention activities and provided opportunities for practice change in RACF.
Dr Jennie Hewitt is a physiotherapist, educator, and academic researcher with a passion for delivering best practice. She has been awarded an Australian National Lifetime Achievement Award, and a National Commendation for Better Practice for her work on the Sunbeam Aged Care Exercise Program. She attained the Morley Award, for the paper most likely to influence policy and practice, from the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. Her work has been used to advocate for Australian Aged Care Funding Reform, she appeared as an expert witness at the Royal Commission and has worked as Technical Advisor to the Federal Chief Allied Health Officer on the implementation and scaling of the Sunbeam Program in 119 aged care facilities across Australia. In 2022 she won the innovAGEING award with Whiddon for a project that used exercise to address chronic pain and deconditioning and in 2023 she was named as an Ageing Asia Global Trailblazer.
Rik Dawson graduated from Sydney University in 1993. Rik is a titled Gerontological Physiotherapist, Vice President of the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) and the APA representative on the Aged Care Quality Standard Clinical Working Group. Rik was the owner of Age well Physiotherapy, a practice that employed physiotherapists and occupational therapists in Aged Care across Australia. Rik sold his practice in 2020 and is now enrolled at Sydney University as PhD candidate where he is focusing on telehealth for older people. Rik is a graduate of the AICD and has been a Director of the APA since 2017. Rik was a member of the Audit and Risk Committee and the Director member on the Physiotherapy Research Foundation where he worked to connect research to policy and practice. Rik currently chairs the Nominations, Remuneration, and Governance Board sub-committee. He has a passion for communication, advocacy, leadership and good governance. Rik believes that linking strategy to member value is key to non-profit organisation’s success.
In the lead up to the 2023 Joint Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Falls Prevention Society & World Falls Congress, we chat with Dr Sandra Luliano, one of the keynote speakers. A Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Sandra recently completed a trial in 60 residential aged care homes. Her randomised controlled trial investigated the effect of of supplementing the daily diet of older residents with additional dairy foods, on falls and fractures.
The Australian and New Zealand Falls Prevention Society was featured in the first edition of Aged Care Australia magazine. The article talks about the cost of falls in older adults.
Aged Care Australia is a bi-annual magazine and this issue is dedicated to raising awareness of current issues and interests.
You can read the magazine online and check out our article on page 46.
Listen to the ABC Radio National Health Report Interview with Prof Cathie Sherrington on ‘Balance exercises are good for preventing falls in the elderly, and Tai Chi seems to be effective too’.
The Conversation recently published an important message on exercise for older people. Read it here.
Channel 7 News recently featured NeuRA research on ladder fall risk. Watch here.