CATALYST-affiliated faculty members join online falls prevention awareness effort
By Tyler Griesenbrock
CATALYST scientific editor
Published September 21, 2021
With the approaching arrival of the fall season, the National Council on Aging (NCOA) has planned multiple events for National Falls Prevention Awareness Week, set for Sept. 20 to 24, and two CATALYST-affiliated researchers are taking part.Dr. Carmen Quatman, an Associate Professor of Clinical Orthopaedics in the Division of Trauma at The Ohio State University and an orthopedic surgeon, and Dr. Quatman-Yates, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Ohio State and director for the Leading Improvement-Focused Teams for Advancing Health System Outcomes Lab (LIFT Lab), offered a webinar as part of the event.
Drs. Quatman and Quatman-Yates also work with CATALYST, the Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking in Health Services and Implementation Science Research. Specifically related to health services research, Dr. Quatman-Yates focuses on topics such as continuous learning in health systems to improve outcomes, effective fall prevention at home, and physical therapy evaluation and interventions after mild traumatic brain injury.
The National Council on Aging and the U.S. Administration for Community Living chose their Community-FIT – CARES paper and partnership as one of four Emergency Medical Services (EMS)-Academic partnerships focused on fall prevention. In the webinar, they offered an overview of their work together. The recording of the session will be available at a later date.
Drs. Quatman and Quatman-Yates, when discussing their webinar, said the organizations “were particularly intrigued by our ongoing partnership and sharing of our ‘gemba walks’ and ride-alongs,” as well as “our combination of quality improvement and research, and the way we have created sustainable change.”
Gemba walks refer to the practice of “taking the time to watch how a process is done and talking with those who do the job,” Six Sigma Daily says.
The final webinar session in the series is planned for 1 p.m. Sept. 22, and registration is available on the National Council on Aging’s webinar series page.
In their session, Dr. Quatman and Dr. Quatman-Yates discussed how they “engaged with local EMS/community paramedicine to identify and address falls risk at the scene,” according to the NCOA’s description of the webinar.
It is not the first time Dr. Quatman has presented their collaborative work to a wider audience. In 2019, she spoke at TEDxColumbusWomen, offering a talk titled “Transforming the Impact of Falls.” The recording of that presentation is already available.
According to the description of her TEDxColumbusWomen presentation, “After her own traumatic knee injury that left her unable to navigate her home, Dr. Quatman recovered and became an orthopedic trauma surgeon with an emphasis on geriatric care. In her talk, she shares the exciting work her team is doing to harness community paramedicine to help older adults age safely in their own homes.”
For more information about CATALYST, visit go.osu.edu/catalyst. For more information about the NCOA, visit www.ncoa.org.