Veterans Affairs committee  If I could just answer briefly, when the fall prevention initiative was under way it was clear that the two agencies were communicating very clearly and it was a great partnership. My understanding was that the Department of Veterans Affairs approached Health Canada because Healt

Veterans Affairs committee  It's very difficult to do, because it's difficult to show that something was prevented. It's easy to show that something happened. To my knowledge, that's sort of the third rail of primary prevention research, to show that if I spend $10, I can save $100; and even if we can come

Veterans Affairs committee  I know Norah Keating. I wasn't part of this document. I know some of the people who are involved in this. I'm just concerned that if all we do is assess and recommend, and that's it, it won't work. We have to assess, recommend, and then follow up—have rapport, assess again. It's

Veterans Affairs committee  It was your predecessor, so maybe you could answer that.

Veterans Affairs committee  Clara's predecessor was Nancy Ecclestone, who had contacts with Health Canada. She was aware of the falls prevention initiative and came back to London and told me about it. I'm not sure that answers your question, though.

Veterans Affairs committee  That was your earlier question.

Veterans Affairs committee  The only way we could get address lists was through Veterans Affairs.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. On the front page of my questionnaire, I said that I had exclusion criteria. If there were major cognitive issues for a person--they'd had a stroke or something like that--then they were not to fill out the questionnaire themselves. All fall studies,

Veterans Affairs committee  As a researcher, yes, I would say more research is needed.

Veterans Affairs committee  Not at all. Well, no, not not at all, but it's not routine. So I'm thinking about on a person's 70th birthday, in the way that when a woman reaches 40 she's supposed to have a mammogram, and when a woman is sexually active she's supposed to have a PAP smear, about that kind of th

Veterans Affairs committee  The point I was trying to make, and my apologies if I didn't make it clearly, is that we have some falls prevention research programs that clearly show a reduction in falls and we have some that show no reduction in falls. What we're trying to do now is figure out the minimum—the

Veterans Affairs committee  They would be traditional medical practices that haven't been demonstrated to work. Fortunately, the number of those is getting smaller every year.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you.

Veterans Affairs committee  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 i

Veterans Affairs committee  That was my reading of what the VIS program was designed to do, and that's why I was so positive when I saw that. I would just like to see it evaluated. It's easy to say we want to have continuity of care, but if you get caseloads that are too large, or if you don't have a rappor