Mr. Mark Speechley at the Veterans Affairs Committee

On January 29th, 2008. See this statement in context.

January 29th, 2008 / 4:30 p.m.

Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario

Mark Speechley

I anticipated your question.

I tried to find some evidence that their national fall prevention programs were effective, and I guess they have been too recently introduced to provide evidence. Now that you mention 1999, if there was going to be an effect, we might start to see it. I looked for publications to that effect, and I couldn't find any.

At the national level, we don't have evidence that they work, but we know from several specific studies that we can modify risk factors and reduce falling in the study groups. I think we have to extrapolate from these studies to the national level, but I'm afraid I don't have evidence.

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